KINGSTON, R.I. – Aug. 31, 2026 – As the United States celebrates its 250th birthday this year, two core questions from the days of the American Revolution remain: What does it mean to be free? Who gets to be free?
The University of Rhode Island Center for the Humanities’ annual public lecture series goes in depth on how the American Revolution has shaped the United States since gaining its independence from Great Britain in 1776, and how different groups over time have used the ideas of the American Revolution to push their own ideas of freedom. “American Revolutions,” will host seven academic scholars from around the country to discuss how Americans and the world have reflected on the meanings of the American Revolution, then and now.
The four presentations during the 2026 fall semester will focus on the American Revolution itself. Events will take place on the Kingston Campus and will also be livestreamed through the lecture series’ website.
“We’re going to be thinking about the American Revolution in ways that people won’t always get on the History Channel,” URI Center for the Humanities Director Erik Loomis said. “We’re hoping to introduce some perspectives in this series about the Revolution and its impacts that are both familiar and unfamiliar.”
Loomis also said Rhode Island’s role during the American Revolution will be discussed during this series, particularly how slaves in this state successfully fought to help end slavery in New England and the country. Slaves in Rhode Island at the time used the American Revolution to expand the boundaries of freedom, Loomis said.
“Ideas of freedom are at the core of what it means to be in Rhode Island with Roger Williams and religious toleration. But what did that mean to interactions between Europeans and Native Americans?,” Loomis said. “How does that change in a place like Rhode Island and southern New England when you have this new vision of freedom articulated in a new nation? These are questions our series will shed light on.”
Series rundown
The lecture series commences Thursday, Sept. 24, at 4 p.m., with Binghamton University history professor Rob Parkinson discussing “Everything You Wanted to Know About the Declaration* *But Were Afraid to Ask” in the Galanti Lounge at the Robert L. Carothers Library and Learning Commons, 15 Lippitt Road on the Kingston Campus. Parkinson has written four books on Revolutionary America, including “Tyrants and Rogues: Understanding the Declaration of Independence,” published this year.
Parkinson’s lecture will discuss how there were more than two dozen charges against King George listed in the declaration and what those were all about. He will also share background on the British rogues behind those charges.
On Wednesday, Oct. 21, at 4 p.m.,Rhode Island College professor of dance Jessica T. Pearson will join Langston Hughes Community Poetry Reading Committee Co-Director April H. Brown to perform “Soul Value.” Pearson is a dancer, educator and choreographer who danced with the Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Ensemble, Gesel Mason, Concepts In Motion in Bermuda and Denizen Arts. She was also a principal dancer in the 2022 Disney film “Hocus Pocus 2.”
Brown, who earned her MBA at URI, has more than 25 years’ experience in community development, cultural leadership and educational equity. She is also a fellow with Ocean Nexus within the URI Department of Marine Affairs.
Brown and Pearson’s performance, to be held in the Hope Room of the Robert J. Higgins Welcome Center, 45 Upper College Road, will bring to life the stories of New England Black women—Elleanor Eldridge, Elizabeth Freeman and Margaret Kinnicutt—and the men of the 1st Rhode Island Regiment during and after the American Revolution. “Soul Value” will be a dynamic blend of monologue, dance, ritual and song highlighting the untold contributions of Black men and women in New England history, focusing on their advocacy, resilience and survival.
David Hsiung, professor of history emeritus at Juanita College in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, will present a lecture titled “Environmental Legacies: How the War of Independence Affected the Natural World in Predictable and Surprising Ways” on Thursday, Nov. 12, at 4 p.m. in the Higgins Welcome Center’s Hope Room. A Chicago native, Hsiung won the 2008 Theodore C. Blegen Award from the Forest History Society for his article in the New England Quarterly, “Food, Fuel, and the New England Environment in the War for Independence, 1775-1776.” He is currently working on a book that examines environmental history and the War of Independence.
Hsiung’s lecture will ask how the War of Independence affected the natural world, especially since society’s thoughts about war’s impact on the environment usually turn to such events as the atomic bombings in Japan during World War II and the use of Agent Orange in Vietnam.
Linford Fisher, a professor of history at Brown University, will hold the series’ final fall semester lecture titled “A Complicated Revolution: Indigenous Slavery and Dispossession during the War for Independence” on Wednesday, Dec. 9, at 5 p.m. in the Hope Room at the Higgins Welcome Center. Fisher has co-authored two edited collections on Roger Williams and has published a dozen academic essays. He is also the principal investigator of a tribal collective database project titled “Stolen Relations: Recovering Stories of Indigenous Enslavement in the Americas.”
Fisher’s presentation will investigate some of the hidden undersides of the Revolutionary War experienced by Native Americans. Some were already enslaved and sought their freedom through court cases and by running away. Others found their freedom by fighting either for or against the Americans. Drawing from 15 years of research, these stories will have the audience consider a more complex and complicated legacy of the American Revolution.
The “American Revolutions” series will resume in early February with three talks on the Revolution’s legacy in Latin America, the Caribbean and the U.S. Civil War. The presentations, running from February through April, will focus on images of Cuban Revolutionary masculinity, anti-colonial resistance among Indentured Indian laborers in Jamaica, and the rise and fall of the Second American Republic—which will be part of the Humanities Festival in April.
“Our spring discussions will shed light on what freedom means, who gets to be free and who gets to determine their freedom—questions that are debated throughout the United States and in the Americas, especially,” Loomis said.
The URI Center for the Humanities’ yearlong lecture series is free and open to the public, and is co-sponsored by the URI College of Arts and Sciences, the Division of Research and Economic Development, the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies, and the Women’s Center. A digital archive of last year’s lecture series can be found on the humanities center’s website. For more information on the series, email uri.humanities@gmail.com.