From the very beginning, the history and study of the American Revolution has been bound up with the national identity of the United States, and thus with the country’s present needs. In recent years, the competing imperatives of activists and journalists at both edges of our ideological spectrum have produced warring narratives of the American founding: slavery versus liberty, original sin versus germinal gift, conclave of villains versus garden of heroes. Both of these approaches owe more to politics than to history. As we approach the quarter-millennium mark, how can we equip ourselves and our students with an understanding of the revolutionary era that is rigorous, complex, and above all, true to the evidence? Speaking from the classroom as well as the archive, I will explore strategies to uphold our highest standards as scholars--as seekers and tellers of truths that are not self-evident--while also answering students’ human and civic needs as they take up their burdens as self-governors of this vexed, glorious, ancient, and still-living polity.

Light refreshments will be served. 

Jane Kamensky earned her BA (1985) and PhD (1993) in history from Yale University. She is Jonathan Trumbull Professor of American History at Harvard University and Pforzheimer Foundation Director of the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America at Harvard Radcliffe Institute. A historian of British America and the United States, she is the author of numerous books, including A Revolution in Color: The World of John Singleton Copley (2016), which won four major prizes and was a finalist for several others. A former Commissioner of the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, she serves as a Trustee of the Museum of the American Revolution, and as one of the principal investigators on the NEH/ Department of Education-funded initiative, Educating for American Democracy.