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.
January 2024
Virtual Author’s Talk— Dishonored Americans: The Political Death of Loyalists in Revolutionary America
In the final words of the Declaration of Independence, the signatories famously pledged their lives, their fortunes and their "sacred Honor" to one another, but what about those who made the opposite choice? By looking through the lens of honor culture of the period, Timothy Compeau, assistant professor of history at Huron University College at the University of Western Ontario, offers an innovative assessment of the experience of Americans who made the fateful decision to remain loyal to the British…
Find out more »February 2024
Author’s Talk— Mental Maps of the Founders: How Geographic Imagination Guided America’s Revolutionary Leaders
The American founders were men of high intellect, steely integrity, and enormous ambition—but they were not all of one mind. They came from diverse colonies, and they all sought their futures on different horizons. Without reliable maps of even nearby terrain, they contributed in different, and sometimes conflicting, ways to the expansion of a young republic on the seaboard edge of a continent of whose vast expanses they were largely ignorant. Through an examination of six founders, historian Michael Barone…
Find out more »Lunch Bite — Three George Washington Manuscripts
Research Services Librarian Rachel Nellis discusses three manuscripts written by Gen. George Washington during the American Revolution. The manuscripts, recently donated to the Institute as part of the George Miller Chester Jr. (Society of the Cincinnati in the State of Connecticut) Collection of Historic General Washington Documents, include two wartime letters written by Washington from Harlem Heights in 1776 and Morristown in 1777. The third manuscript, issued to a French officer in 1783, is one of the earliest examples of…
Find out more »Panel Discussion – A Celebration of the 50th Anniversary of the Library
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…
Find out more »Lecture—The American Revolution in the Old Northwest
The American Revolution in the West is often neglected from the overall history of the conflict, though it had a significant impact on how it was conducted. Larry Nelson, assistant professor of history at Bowling Green State University, discusses this important component of the war by examining American ambitions in the Old Northwest, the vast uncharted region north and west of the Ohio River; the political goals of the Continental Congress within that region; and the role of Virginia militia…
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