Robert K. Webb Lecture with Dr. Sarah Pearsall

The Department of History presents their annual Robert K. Webb Lecture:

A World History of the American Revolution?

Over the last few decades, there has been increasing scholarly attention to the United States in the world and an enlarged geography for early America.  Yet the American Revolution has been largely resistant to such a treatment, remaining sturdily provincial especially in popular understandings. This lecture will consider the challenges and advantages of globalizing the American Revolution.   In particular, it will address the stakes of expanding both the geography and the cast of characters especially during tumultuous times.

Sarah M.S. Pearsall is Professor and Chair of History at Johns Hopkins University; she previously taught for nearly a decade at Cambridge University. She is the author of four books, including Atlantic Families: Lives and Letters in the Later Eighteenth Century (Oxford University Press, 2008); Polygamy: An Early American History (Yale University Press, 2019); Polygamy: A Very Short Introduction (2022); and most recently, Freedom Round the Globe: A World History of the American Revolution, came out this year with Knopf Doubleday.