Speaker Series: The Declaration at the Birth of Our Nation

The Declaration at the Birth of Our Nation

NNK 250 Speaker Series featuring Dr. Phil Levy

The Declaration of Independence has been called “American scripture.” The Constitution certainly has its celebrators, but there is a unique reverence reserved for the document that Americans see as the nation’s birth announcement. The Declaration’s elegant prose, and resonant list of complaints represent the melding of English thought and colonial experiences in the years after the Seven Years War. It is all too easy though to keep the Declaration in its protected glass case and not see it as it was seen and reacted to at the time of its drafting. This talk looks at the implications of the Declaration’s critique of the empire and how it was received by a country already at war for its independence and in states (former colonies) that had been busy declaring their own independence well before July 4th.

About the Speaker:

Philip Levy is a Professor of History at the University of South Florida and is an Organization of American Historians Distinguished Lecturer. He is the author of several books many of which deal with George Washington both as a person and as a national icon. Where the Cherry Tree Grew: The Story of Ferry Farm, George Washington’s Boyhood Home (2013) and George Washington Written Upon the Land: Nature, Memory, Myth, and Landscape (2015) focus on the places of Washington childhood. The Permanent Resident: Excavations and Explorations of the Life of George Washington (2022)explores the many sites of Washington’s life and how their stories have been shaped by archaeology and issues of memory and commemoration and won the Society for Historical Archaeology’s James Deetz Book Award. His newest book, Yard Birds: The Lives and Times of America’s Urban Chickens, tells a very different story from his other work and explores how chickens and cities have shaped one another.