Events
MLK Week: ANNETTE GORDON-REED AND PETER S. ONUF: JEFFERSON, SLAVERY, AND THE MORAL IMAGINATION
Date and Time
Thursday, January 24, 2019 7:00 PM - 8:30 AM
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Description
Monticello, the mountaintop plantation of Thomas Jefferson outside of
Charlottesville, Virginia, is a landscape of contradictions at the
heart of the American experience. Like his fellow Virginians, George
Washington and James Madison, Jefferson – the most revered philosopher
of the early republic’s Enlightenment ideals – was deeply involved in
the nation’s original sin of slavery. Not only was he a slaveowner.
DNA testing has strongly suggested that he fathered children with
Sally Hemings. In today’s divisive and distrustful moment, how can
Americans grapple productively with the most challenging obstacles to
finding common ground for the common good, especially at the
troubled crossroads of race and American memory?
The Hauenstein Center is proud to partner with Grand Valley’s Division of Inclusion and Equity to explore this question with historians Annette Gordon-Reed (Harvard University) and Peter S. Onuf (University of Virginia) in commemoration of the life of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Presenters:
Annette Gordon-Reed is a professor of American legal history at Harvard Law School. She won the Pulitzer Prize in History in 2009 for The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family, a subject she had previously written about in Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy. Her most recently published book (with Peter S. Onuf) is Most Blessed of the Patriarchs: Thomas Jefferson and the Empire of the Imagination.
Peter S. Onuf is a professor of history, emeritus, at the University of Virginia, where he has taught for more than 20 years. Onuf is also senior fellow at Monticello’s Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies. A leading scholar of Jefferson and the early American republic, he is the author, co-author, and editor of numerous books including Jefferson’s Empire: The Language of American Nationhood, The Mind of Thomas Jefferson, and Jeffersonian Legacies.
The event is free and open to the public. Registration requested at gvsu.edu/hc/events or by phone at (616) 331-2770.
Contact
Hauenstein Center
331-2770
[email protected]