About this Event
Why is America so divided? What has brought Americans together—and what might do so again?
Join David S. Reynolds and Annette Gordon-Reed for a conversation about the competing visions of freedom, equality, and belonging that have shaped the nation. Drawing on Reynolds’s new book, Two Ships, they will explore the legacies of Jamestown in 1619 and Plymouth in 1620, tracing their influence through slavery, the Civil War, and the divisions of our own time.
The conversation will also consider a powerful source of hope: the alliances across racial and regional lines that have driven democratic reform. What can these shared struggles teach us about building a more just and united country?
As the nation marks its 250th anniversary, Two Ships offers a timely way to reconsider America’s founding promises and unfinished struggles. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., calls it “essential reading for today’s polarized times,” and NPR’s Maureen Corrigan praises it as “dazzling.”
Reynolds is a Distinguished Professor at the CUNY Graduate Center and the Bancroft Prize–winning author of Walt Whitman’s America and Lincoln Prize–winning author of Abe: Abraham Lincoln in His Times. Gordon-Reed is a professor at Harvard University and the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family. She has recently edited Jefferson on Race: A Reader.
Presented with the Ph.D. Program in English, the Ph.D. Program in History, the Ph.D. and M.A. Program in Comparative Literature, and the Leon Levy Center for Biography.
Event venue & nearby stays
Elebash Recital Hall, The Graduate Center, 365 5th Avenue, New York, United States
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