Join us for a three-part series of in-person lectures by Dr. Matthew Warshauer, in preparation for America’s 250th!
July 10th: The British Invasion!! (No, not the Beatles!!)
We’re talking 1760s not the 1960s. The Parliamentary Acts that led to the Revolution. What really led to the American Revolution? Taxation without representation? Tyranny against the people’s liberties? American refusal to pay taxes for their own defense? Only a dive into the 1760s and 1770s will tell.
July 17th: Reading the Connecticut Courant: A Window into Revolution
By 1775 the American colonies were moving closer and closer to an irreparable rupture with Britain. As a key newspaper, read widely throughout the colonies, the Connecticut Courant offers key insights into what Americans were thinking in the year before independence. This is a deep dive into 1775. Let’s read some select articles and pick them apart.
July 24th: The Declaration of Independence: A Minute Reading into Meaning, Memory, and Fantastical Misunderstanding!
What did the Declaration actually declare? And why…and to whom? What actually was the point and in the long stretch of history, where does the document and its ideas stack up in our contemporary world?
Matthew Warshauer is a professor of history at Central Connecticut State University, where he has studied and written extensively on what he calls “the American paradox,” the conflicting ideological beliefs and practices of the United States. Learn more here.
Co-sponsored by the Friends of the Avon Library & the Avon Historical Society.
Please register once for this series, even if you cannot attend all three sessions.