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.
February 2022
Virtual Author’s Talk – A Most Gallant Resistance: The Delaware River Campaign, September-November 1777
By October 1777, British forces occupied Philadelphia. Yet an elaborate American defense of the Delaware River crippled the British supply lines and threatened their ability to hold the city. Historian Jim Mc Intyre discusses the massive effort by the Crown forces to gain control of the strategic waterway. He highlights the British occupation of Philadelphia, the American defense of the river, and several often-neglected engagements such as the successful repulse of a Hessian attack on Fort Mercer in New Jersey,…
Find out more »March 2022
Virtual Author’s Talk – Cornwallis: Soldier and Statesman in a Revolutionary World
Charles Cornwallis was a leading figure in late eighteenth-century Great Britain. His career spanned the American War of Independence, Irish Union, the French Revolutionary Wars and the building of the second British Empire in India. Focusing on the first part of his new book, Richard Middleton offers insight into Cornwallis’ time in America and shows that Cornwallis' legacy during the Revolutionary War is significantly more complex than the shortcomings he is most often associated with. The talk will last approximately…
Find out more »Virtual Lecture – Displaced: The Siege of Boston and the “Donation People” of 1775
In 1775, the British army seethed within Boston as the Continental Army besieged the city, compelling thousands of civilians to flee to the surrounding countryside. General George Washington and the Massachusetts Provincial Congress coordinated efforts to support the influx of displaced persons while attempting to protect the Continental Army from smallpox flaring in Boston. Many refugees—including infirm, ill and elderly individuals as well as mothers and children—were removed and relocated to towns across Massachusetts. Katie Turner Getty discusses the plight…
Find out more »Virtual Lunch Bite – Mercy Otis Warren’s Poems, Dramatic and Miscellaneous
Join Research Services Librarian Rachel Nellis for a discussion of Mercy Otis Warren's Poems, Dramatic and Miscellaneous, published in 1790, that contains two plays and several allegorical or satirical poems on the Revolution that were dedicated to George Washington and praised by Alexander Hamilton. The presentation will last approximately 30 minutes on Zoom. Registration is required to access the Lunch Bite.
Find out more »October 2022
Livestream – Chinese Tea and American Rebels: The Global Origins of the Revolutionary Crisis
Watch live online as historian Nick Bunker delivers the annual George Rogers Clark Lecture. Drawing on his book, An Empire on the Edge, a 2015 finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for History, this lecture reexamines the Boston Tea Party and the onset of the revolution in Massachusetts in 1774, and places them in their global context. Making connections between events in China, India, London, and America, Bunker discusses how Britain’s commercial dynamism outstripped its political imagination and how a 1772…
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