AUGUSTA — Award-winning historian and author Alan Taylor is to present “Freedom, Slavery, and Maine Statehood in 1820” at 7 p.m. Friday, Aug. 6, at Central Church, 20 Mission Ave.
Taylor’s presentation will be the sixth of a series of lectures sponsored by Old Fort Western and the Maine Bicentennial Commission.
A 1977 graduate of Colby College, Taylor received his doctorate in American History from Brandeis University in 1986. After a postdoctoral fellowship at the Institute of Early American History and Culture (Williamsburg, Virginia, 1985-1987), he taught at Boston University, 1987-1994; the University of California at Davis, 1994-2014; and the University of Virginia, where he holds the Thomas Jefferson Foundation Chair, 2014. In 2016-2017 he served as the Harmsworth Professor at Queens College, Oxford University.
Taylor has published 10 books: “Liberty Men and Great Proprietors: The Revolutionary Settlement on the Maine Frontier, 1760-1820,” (1990); “William Cooper’s Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early Republic,” (1995); “American Colonies” (2001); “Writing Early American History” (2005); “The Divided Ground: Indians, Settlers, and the Northern Borderland of the American Revolution” (2006); “The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, & Indian Allies” (2010); “The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia” (2013); “American Revolutions: A Continental History, 1750-1804″ (2016); “Thomas Jefferson’s Education” (2019); and “American Republics: A Continental History of the United States, 1783-1850″ (2021).
“William Cooper’s Town” won the Bancroft, Beveridge, and Pulitzer Prizes. “The Internal Enemy” won the Pulitzer Prize for American history and the Merle Curti Prize for Social History (OAH). “American Colonies” won the 2001 Gold Medal for Non-Fiction from the Commonwealth Club of California. “The Divided Ground” won the 2007 Society for Historians of the Early Republic book prize and the 2004-7 Society of the Cincinnati triennial book prize. “The Civil War of 1812” won the Empire State History Prize and was a finalist for the George Washington Prize.
Taylor spent 12 years as the faculty advisor for the California State Social Science and History Project, which provides curriculum support and professional development for K-12 teachers in history and social studies. In 2002 he won the University of California at Davis Award for Teaching and Scholarly Achievement and the Phi Beta Kappa, Northern California Association, Teaching Excellence Award.
In 2016 he won membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and in 2020 received membership in the American Philosophical Society.
A book signing by the author is to follow the talk.
Copies of “American Republics: A Continental History of the United States” and “Liberty Men and Great Proprietors: The Revolutionary Settlement on the Maine Frontier,” will be available for purchase.
Suggested admission is $10.
For more information, call 207-626-2385, email oldfort@oldfortwestern.org, or visit oldfortwestern.org or Facebook at Old Fort Western – Augusta, Maine.
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