Independence Lost
Lives on the Edge of the American Revolution
Williams Research Center, 410 Chartres Street
Free admission
HNOC welcomes Pulitzer Prize-winning author Kathleen DuVal for a fascinating talk exploring the impact of the American Revolution on Louisiana and the Gulf South region. While the thirteen colonies fought with the British over taxes and parliamentary representation, Spanish forces clashed with Britain’s strained army to carve up the Gulf Coast across modern day Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana.
In this lesser-known front of the war, both sides competed for the allegiances of the powerful Chickasaw, Choctaw, and Muscogee Creek nations and the inhabitants of New Orleans and other colonial cities—all of whom had their own ideas about liberty and freedom.
Following Dr. DuVal’s talk, HNOC Deputy Director Erin Greenwald will join her on stage for a conversation that explores the local implications of this overlooked theater of the revolution.
This program is presented in conjunction with American Revolution: The Augmented Exhibition, on view at HNOC until January 17, 2027.
Speakers
Kathleen DuVal
Kathleen DuVal
Kathleen DuVal is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Native Nations: A Millennium in North America and Independence Lost: Lives on the Edge of the American Revolution. A history professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, she is a Guggenheim Fellow and has also won the Bancroft Prize and the Cundill History Prize. She has written for The Atlantic, Time magazine, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal, and she appeared in the recent Ken Burns film The American Revolution. She grew up in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and now lives in Durham, North Carolina. You can find more about her at kathleenduval.net.
Erin Greenwald
Erin Greenwald
Erin Greenwald serves as deputy director at the Historic New Orleans Collection (HNOC), overseeing the divisions of collection development and exhibitions, audience engagement, digital services, and publications, as well as the Williams Research Center. She was previously Vice President of Public Programs at the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities (LEH), where she led statewide program development and implementation and served as editor in chief of 64 Parishes magazine. Prior to her work at the LEH, Greenwald was senior curator and historian at HNOC. Greenwald holds a PhD in history from Ohio State University.
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