Supporting scholarship and promoting popular understanding of the American Revolution is central to the work of the American Revolution Institute. The Institute welcomes distinguished scholars and authors to share their insights and discuss their latest research with the public at Anderson House through lectures, author's talks and panel discussions. The Institute also hosts a variety of other historical programs throughout the year, including our Lunch Bite object talks, battlefield tours, special Anderson House tour programs and other events. Many of the events we offer are free.
September 2023
Author’s Talk – Unfriendly to Liberty: Loyalist Networks and the Coming of the American Revolution in New York City
Drawing from his recent book, historian Christopher Minty, Ph.D., explores the origins of loyalism in New York City between 1766 and 1776, and adds to our understanding of the coming of the American Revolution. Focusing on political culture, organization, and patterns of allegiance, Dr. Minty demonstrates how the contending allegiances of loyalists and patriots were all but locked in place by the outset of war in 1775, and that the political alignments formed during the imperial crisis of the 1760s and…
Find out more »Special Program – The 2023 Society of the Cincinnati Prize Presentation & Reception
The 2023 Society of the Cincinnati Prize honors historian Friederike Baer, Ph.D., and her ground-breaking book Hessians: German Soldiers in the American Revolutionary War (Oxford University Press, 2022). Between 1776 and 1783, Great Britain hired an estimated thirty thousand German soldiers to fight in its war against the American rebels. Collectively known as Hessians, the soldiers and accompanying civilians, including hundreds of women and children, spent extended periods of time in locations as dispersed and varied as Canada, West Florida…
Find out more »October 2023
Author’s Talk – Revolutionary Things: Material Culture and Politics in the Late Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World
Ashli White, professor of history at the University of Miami, explores the circulation of material culture during the American, French, and Haitian revolutions and argues that radical ideals in the eighteenth century were contested through objects as well as in texts. In this lecture on her new book, Dr. White considers how revolutionary things brought people into contact with these transformative political movements in visceral, multiple, and provocative ways. Focusing on a range of objects—ceramics and furniture, garments and accessories,…
Find out more »Author’s Talk – The Tory’s Wife: A Woman and Her Family in Revolutionary America
The Spurgin family of North Carolina experienced the cataclysm of the American Revolution in the most dramatic ways—and from different sides. Jane Welborn Spurgin was a patriot who welcomed Gen. Nathanael Greene to her home and aided the Continental forces. Her husband was a loyalist and an officer fighting for King George III in the local Tory militia. Cynthia Kierner, professor of history at George Mason University, discusses her new book that focuses on the wife of a middling backcountry…
Find out more »November 2023
Author’s Talk – King Hancock: The Radical Influence of a Moderate Founding Father
John Hancock is often associated with the radical commencement of the Revolution and his audacious signature at the bottom of the Declaration of Independence, but his politics were not nearly as bold as they may have seemed. Throughout the Revolution, he frustrated both patriots and loyalists alike but remained the most popular and powerful man in Massachusetts through his ability to find middle ground amidst political turmoil. In her new book, historian Brooke Barbier examines the life and leadership of…
Find out more »