Society of the Cincinnati in the State of Virginia Lecture
This annual lecture focuses on the political, economic and military history of the American Revolution. Thanks to the generosity of the Society, this lecture permits VCU to feature some of the most cutting-edge research on the Revolutionary era for audiences of students, faculty and members of the community.
Upcoming Lecture - Oct 8, 2026 (TBC)
Yorktown, Virginia, holds a familiar place in the history of the American Revolution: in the Siege of Yorktown in the fall of 1781, American and French forces helped to end the Revolutionary War and win American independence. Yet the famous siege is only part of Yorktown’s involvement in the Revolution. Its townspeople had a long war. They threw tea into the York River in November 1774. By the following May, British ships anchored off Yorktown’s wharf were threatening to bombard the city, and repeated invasions endangered the town and its people. Esteemed historian Kathleen DuVal explores what the Revolution was like for the people of Yorktown—men and women, wealthy and poor, free and enslaved—and how their experiences can help us understand more broadly how people lived through the Revolution and what it meant to them.
Kathleen DuVal is a Professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she specializes in early American and Native American history.
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