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The Thompson Lecture honors Dr. Dell Norman Thompson, the longtime Director of Development at Siena College and an enthusiastic advocate for educational initiatives and programs that raise public awareness of the unique contributions of New York to early American history. The Thompson Lecture is an opportunity for our students and Capital Region history enthusiasts to engage a prominent historian of early American history.
2022 "The Political Economy of Plunder: American Expansion Into the Old NorthWest"
Wednesday, April 12, 7:00pm
Key Auditorium, Roger Bacon Hall
Dr. Michael J. Witgen, Professor in the Department of History and the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race at Columbia University, and citizen of the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe.
Early Americans understood Westward expansion as benign and inevitable. The United States government described it as the logical continuation of a process that began with the original European explorers of North America. In this special lecture event, Dr. Witgen challenges both assumptions and argues the United States developed a large-scale and systematic scheme to steal an entire continent from Indigenous people.
2019 "The Chains of Alliance: Euro-Indian Cooperation and Conflict from Contact to the Revolution"
Ambrose-Hesseltine Associate Professor of U.S. Military History, University of Wisconsin-Madison
2018 The Electoral College in Historical Perspective
Professor, Department of History, Johns Hopkins University
2017 Making 'the Cause' Common
Associate Professor, Department of History, Binghamton University, State University of New York
2016 New Netherland Through History and Art
Len F. Tantillo and Dr. Charles Gehring
New Netherland Institute, Albany, NY
2015 Toward an Environmental History of the American Revolution
Associate Professor, Department of History, University at Albany-State University of New York
2014 Memories of War: Visiting Battleground and Bonefields in the Early American Republic
Dean, College of Arts and Sciences, Canisius College
2013 Founding Mothers: Women and Politics in the Early American Republic
University Professor, History and Art History, George Mason University
2012 Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution
Dr. Abner "Woody" Holton III
Professor, Department of History, University of South Carolina
2011 A World We Have Lost: Benjamin Franklin and the American Dream
Dr. Sheila Skemp
Clare Leslie Marquette Professor of American History, Department of History, University of Mississippi
2010 George Washington and John Adams: A Look at Two Very Different Founders
Dr. John E. Ferling
Professor Emeritus, Department of History, University of West Georgia