speaking

In addition to delivering invited lectures at Pacific Slope campuses from UBC in British Columbia, to CSUS in Sacramento to Claremont and Cal State Fullerton in Southern California, I have also been delivering public talks for regional institutions, like the Tacoma Art Museum, Wright Park/Seymour Conservatory, the 5th Avenue Theater and the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, and retirement communities, like Heron's Key in Gig Harbor and Frank Tobey Jones.  I've spoken about Western art and literature, my research on Ishi and Alfred Kroeber and Southern California's Orange Empire and the environmental history of food, and topics in Tacoma's dichotomous relationship with nature—the rise and fall of its faux totem poll, the "around the world in 80 days" stunt tour by flimflam man George Francis Train, the lumber industry and connections with Asia and the Pacific World, and Wright Park as a microcosm of Tacoma's fractious social relations and relations with growth and nature.

I was chosen to deliver the Regester lecture at the University of Puget Sound in 2018. I spoke on "Democratic Vistas: Re-viewing Western History Impressed in Landscapes." (Program here) 

After hearing talks on "Wind Coming from All Directions: Exploration, Cross-cultural Exchanges & the Forging of Pacific Networks

along the Northwest Coast from the Vantage Points of Nootka Sound | Yuquot" and "Orange Empire: California and the Fruits of Eden," the folks at Heron's key asked me to do a lecture series on the American Revolution, as we are in the midst of its 250th anniversary... Description of that lecture series follows:

Reckoning with the American Revolution: Histories, Legacies, and Memories of the Founding

In this lecture and discussion series, we will explore how we remember the American Revolution and what its history and legacies mean for us today. Lectures will be focused on key figures and issues wrought into our history and the country at its founding—including democracy and freedom, slavery and Indigenous dispossession, and the complex bequest the founding generation gave the nation. 

I: The Two Georges: George Washington, George III and the Road to Revolution. In Washington Irving’s story, Rip Van Winkle, who had slept through the Revolution, is stunned to find George the IIIrd's portrait at the local inn replaced by that of George Washington. We will explore how the colonists from Europe went from celebrating the King and their status as British subjects to committing a symbolic regicide, and elevating Washington in the other George’s stead. Through Washington’s life, we will also trace the coming of the Revolution, from his participation in the French and Indian War to his iconic crossing of the Delaware to save the Revolutionary cause. 

II. “Who Tells Your Story?”: the two Hamiltons and how we remember the Revolution. People will have a chance to see Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton some time in the week before this session. We will have time for people to share their views and reviews, and we will explore the connections and disjunctions between the musical’s view of Hamilton and the “real” Hamilton, and what the hit show’s view into the Founding tells us about how we reckon with our world shaking history. 

III. Notes on the E/State of Thomas Jefferson. Alluding to Thomas Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia, this lecture will delve into Jefferson’s powerful ideas and deep contradictions, which embody those of the nation: a founder who proclaimed human equality and yet remained a slave master throughout his life. These are all on display, today, at the literal estate of Jefferson—the Monticello Plantation.

IV. “Charters of Freedom”: The Declaration, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights in Historical Perspective. At the National Archives, these three generative documents are on display in a kind of national shrine as the “charters of freedom." We will look at their historical context and their legacies—as well as the irony and necessity of enshrining those documents. 

email: dsackman@pugetsound.edu