To commemorate the 250th anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill, historian Paul Lockhart of Wright State University, offers a reassessment of the battle and explores how various misconceptions about it have been formed in American memory over the last two and a half centuries. This program accompanies our current exhibition, Revolutionary Beginnings: War and Remembrance in the First Year of America’s Fight for Independence, on view through January 4, 2026.
About the Speaker
Paul Lockhart, Ph.D., is a professor of history at Wright State University. He received his Ph.D. in military history and early modern European history from Purdue University and is the author of seven books, including Frederik II and the Protestant Cause: Denmark’s Role in the Wars of Religion (Brill, 2004), Denmark, 1513-1660: The Rise and Decline of a Renaissance Monarchy (Oxford University Press, 2007), The Drillmaster of Valley Forge: The Baron de Steuben and the Making of the American Army (HarperCollins, 2008), The Whites of Their Eyes: Bunker Hill, the First American Army, and the Emergence of George Washington (HarperCollins, 2011), and most recently Firepower: How Weapons Shaped Warfare (Basic Books, 2021). Dr. Lockhart has held fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies and the American-Scandinavian Foundation; has been Visiting Lecturer at the University of Southern Denmark, Odense, and was named the National Endowment for the Humanities Visiting Distinguished Professor at SUNY/Potsdam College. In 2014, he was selected as the Brage Golding Distinguished Professor of Research, Wright State University, and was named Ohio Distinguished Historian from 2020-2021 by the Ohio Academy of History. In 2021, he was elected to membership in The Royal Society for Danish History for significant lifelong contributions to the history of Denmark. At Wright State, Lockhart served as Senior Fellow in CELIA (Collaborative Education, Leadership, and Innovation in the Arts), putting together a community-wide commemoration of the centenary of the First World War. In 2022, he was awarded the Trustees Award for Faculty Excellence, the highest academic honor awarded by the university.