Events

Founded on November 30, 1973, our library is one of the most important resources in the United States for advanced study on the Revolution and the art of war in the eighteenth century, with more than fifty thousand rare books, manuscripts, prints, broadsides, maps, and modern reference sources. Kicking off a series of events commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of our library, the Institute’s executive director, Andy Morse, along with former fellows John Maass, Jake Ruddiman and Iris De Rode, will discuss the significance, evolution, and collections of our library and the scholarship that has taken place within its walls. Following the discussion, the library will be open with a display of some of its treasures.

Registration is requested. To attend the Panel Discussion in-person at Anderson House, or to watch virtually, please use the appropriate link below.

This program was postponed from its originally scheduled date of November 30, 2023. If you have already registered to attend the panel discussion, either in-person at Anderson House or virtually on Zoom, your earlier registration will be honored on February 21, 2024.

Register to Attend the Panel Discussion at Anderson House

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About the Panelists

Iris De Rode is a Dutch historian who specializes in the French participation in the American Revolution and was awarded the 2023 Ellen McCallister Clark Massachusetts Library Fellowship to conduct research for her book, Military Enlightenment on the Ground, which examines the collaboration among French and American military leaders that secured American Independence, focusing on the involvement and contributions of four French leaders in particular. She received her Ph.D. in 2019 for her dissertation, “François-Jean de Chastellux: un soldat-philosophe dans le monde atlantique à l’époque des Lumières” (a soldier-philosopher in the Atlantic world at the time of the Enlightenment), at Paris 8 University Vincennes-Saint-Denis. She earned fourteen fellowships while working on her dissertation, including grants from the Richard Lounsbery Foundation, Mount Vernon, Monticello, the French embassy in the Netherlands and the French government. Dr. De Rode has presented her research at more than seventy-five international conferences and has been teaching American, transatlantic and international history at the French University Sciences Po in Paris, France, since 2013. Her other current work includes a documentary film, an audio-guide app that retraces the steps of the French forces on the Washington-Rochambeau Revolutionary Trail and the organization of a lecture and podcast series in partnership with the Embassy of France in Washington, D.C.

John Maass is a military historian and educator at the National Museum of the U.S. Army at Fort Belvoir, Va. He earned his Ph.D. in early American history from Ohio State University and was the Society of the Cincinnati’s first research fellow, having received the Tyree-Lamb Fellowship in 2007. Throughout his time as a fellow in our library, Dr. Maass researched the Revolutionary War and state formation in North Carolina from 1776 through 1789, which contributed to his doctoral dissertation. Since then, he has authored numerous books on Revolutionary War military history, including “That Unhappy Affair”: Horatio Gates and the Battle of Camden (Kershaw County Historical Society, 2001); North Carolina and the French and Indian War: The Spreading Flames of War (The History Press, 2013); The Road to Yorktown: Jefferson, Lafayette, and the British Invasion of Virginia (The History Press, 2015); George Washington’s Virginia (The History Press, 2019); The Battle of Guilford Courthouse: A Most Desperate Engagement (The History Press, 2020); Defending a New Nation, 1783-1811 (U.S. Army Campaigns of the War of 1812) (Department of the Army, 2013); and North Carolina: A Military History (Westholme Publishing, 2022), with fellow historian Mark Bradley. He is currently working on a new book, From Trenton to Yorktown: Turning Points of the Revolutionary War, due out in 2025. Additionally, he is the founder of the Rockbridge Civil War Round Table and a former co-editor of the Journal of Backcountry Studies.

Jake Ruddiman is an associate professor of history at Wake Forest University. As a Ph.D. student in 2007, and again in 2012, he was awarded a Society of the Cincinnati Scholars’ Grant to conduct research on the impact of military service on the lives of the young officers of the Continental Army, which resulted in his first book, Becoming Men of Some Consequence: Youth and Military Service in the Revolutionary War (University of Virginia Press, 2014). Most recently, he was awarded the 2023 North Carolina Society of the Cincinnati Fellowship (in honor of Ellen McCallister Clark) to conduct research for another book examining the impressions and reactions of Revolutionary War combatants to slavery in diverse regions of North America as recorded by white patriots and loyalists, and British and European soldiers participating on both sides. Across these projects, his work as a historian of Revolutionary America explores how people built their lives, reshaped their communities, and constructed meaning for themselves and for posterity.