The Thompson Lecture honors Dr. Dell Norman Thompson, the longtime Director of Development at Siena College and an enthusiastic advocate for educational initiatives and programs that raise public awareness of the unique contributions of New York to early American history. The Thompson Lecture is an opportunity for our students and Capital Region history enthusiasts to engage a prominent historian of early American history.


 
2022 "The Political Economy of Plunder: American Expansion Into the Old NorthWest"

Wednesday, April 12, 7:00pm

Key Auditorium, Roger Bacon Hall 

 

Dr. Michael J. Witgen, Professor in the Department of History and the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race at Columbia University, and citizen of the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe.

 

Early Americans understood Westward expansion as benign and inevitable. The United States government described it as the logical continuation of a process that began with the original European explorers of North America. In this special lecture event, Dr. Witgen challenges both assumptions and argues the United States developed a large-scale and systematic scheme to steal an entire continent from Indigenous people.

 


2019 "The Chains of Alliance: Euro-Indian Cooperation and Conflict from Contact to the Revolution" 

Dr. John W. Hall

Ambrose-Hesseltine Associate Professor of U.S. Military History, University of Wisconsin-Madison


2018  The Electoral College in Historical Perspective

Dr. François Furstenburg

Professor, Department of History, Johns Hopkins University


2017  Making 'the Cause' Common

Dr. Robert G. Parkinson

Associate Professor, Department of History, Binghamton University, State University of New York


2016 New Netherland Through History and Art

Len F. Tantillo and Dr. Charles Gehring

New Netherland Institute, Albany, NY


2015 Toward an Environmental History of the American Revolution

Dr. Christopher L. Pastore

Associate Professor, Department of History, University at Albany-State University of New York


2014  Memories of War: Visiting Battleground and Bonefields in the Early American Republic

Dr. Thomas A. Chambers

Dean, College of Arts and Sciences, Canisius College


2013  Founding Mothers: Women and Politics in the Early American Republic

Dr. Rosemarie Zagarri

University Professor, History and Art History, George Mason University


​2012 Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution

Dr. Abner "Woody" Holton III 

Professor, Department of History, University of South Carolina


​2011  A World We Have Lost: Benjamin Franklin and the American Dream

Dr. Sheila Skemp

Clare Leslie Marquette Professor of American History, Department of History, University of Mississippi


2010  George Washington and John Adams: A Look at Two Very Different Founders

Dr. John E. Ferling

Professor Emeritus, Department of History, University of West Georgia