The James Ford Bell Lecture
This signature lecture series offers presentations by field experts on topics related to major themes in the Bell Library collection.
2026 James Ford Bell Lecture Real Housewives of Revolutionary Connecticut
What to do? Your husband has been captured by British forces, and your neighbor’s husband ran away last month to join them. As the Revolutionary War threw Connecticut homes into upheaval, men found themselves forced to choose sides, and ordinary housewives who had been relegated to the domestic sphere now found themselves on the political front lines. How women clashed with their husbands and each other over the Revolution is the focus of Professor Zabin’s new research.
Please register if you plan to attend the 2026 James Ford Bell Lecture, featuring Dr. Serena Zabin. Her talk, “Real Housewives of Revolutionary Connecticut,” focuses on family history and the American Revolution.
The lecture begins at 7 p.m. Guests are welcome to arrive early and view the exhibit in the James Ford Bell Gallery, “The Right of the People: Honoring the 250th Anniversary of the Signing of the Declaration of Independence.”
Past lectures: 2015 to present
M. Antoni J. Ucerler, S.J., Director of the Ricci Institute for Chinese-Western Cultural History, University of San Francisco, presented “Two Jesuits, Two Manuscripts, Two Visions of Ming China” on Thursday, Sept. 24, 2015.
Kathryn L. Reyerson, Department of History, University of Minnesota, presented “The Fifteenth-Century Mediterranean: Trade in a Transitional Time” on Thursday, Oct. 20, 2016.
Betty Bright, writer, curator, and historian, presented “Past in Present: The Book’s Evolving Persona” on Thursday, Sept. 28, 2017.
Ann Waltner, Professor in the Department of History at the University of Minnesota, presented a lecture about festivals in early modern China on Wednesday, Nov. 7, 2018.
Paul Freedman, Chester D. Tripp Professor of History, Yale University, presented “Poverty and Prestige: Food and Social Status in Pre-Modern Europe” on Thursday, Oct. 17, 2019.
The James Ford Bell Lecture skipped a year in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Chad Anderson, Visiting Assistant Professor of History at Hartwick College in Oneonta, New York, presented “Hidden in Plain Sight: Stories of Indigenous Power in Early American Cartography” on Thursday, Oct. 7, 2021.
Michael Gaudio, U of M Professor, Art History, presented “Speaking Images: The Art of Travel Literature in Early Modern Europe,” on Thursday, Oct. 27, 2022.
Ricardo Padrón, Professor of Spanish at the University of Virginia presented “Early Modern Vernacular Cartography: The Lessons of Sketch Maps” on Thursday, Sept. 21, 2023.
Carla Cevasco, Associate Professor of American Studies at Rutgers University-New Brunswick, presented “A Mixture of Nations: Feeding Children and Empires in the Early American Northeast” on Wednesday, Nov. 20, 2024.
Mary Caton Lingold, Department of English, Virginia Commonwealth University, presented “Hearing African Music Across the Early Modern Atlantic World” on Thursday, Oct. 16, 2025.