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Profs & Pints: The Other Founders

Profs and Pints presents: "The Other Founders," a street-level guide to the unsung heroes of the American Revolution, with Richard Bell, associate professor of history at the University of Maryland.

To live in Washington D.C. is to be constantly exposed to tributes to the Founding Fathers. The National Mall is a sort of theme park devoted to remembering these great men, about whom literally thousands of books have been written. Rick Bell, a history professor who has given several gripping Profs and Pints talks about the revolutionary era, thinks theres a bit of a problem with this sort of founders worship. Turning a handful of leaders of the American Revolution into our secular saints has made it difficult to see the American Revolution for what it truly was: an epic struggle with a cast of characters far greater than the handful of faces that we can cram onto six different banknotes and a few coins.

Come hear Professor Bell talk instead about some of the many other men and women who peopled the American Revolution. Hell probe unexpected corners of this sprawling, eight-year war in search of the typhoid-ridden immigrant corset-maker who wrote the pamphlet that gave colonists the confidence to believe they could beat Britain; the Massachusetts woman who disguised herself as a man so that she could serve in Washingtons Army; the enslaved stable hand at Mount Vernon who ran off to join the war and who ended up on the other side of the world; and the widow who became the most important Native American leader during the war.

His talk will reveal the breadth and depth of the sacrifices that the colonists made as they worked to turn a small-scale protest over the price of goods like tea into a fight for freedom. His own British background will add a whole other level of subversiveness to the proceedings. Youll leave with a much greater understanding of the American Revolution and a much greater appreciation of your own capacity to make a difference. (Advance tickets: $12. Doors: $15. Save $2 with student ID. Time listed is for doors. Talk starts 30 minutes later. Please arrive in plenty of time to place any order and be seated and settled before the talk begins.)