August 27, 2007
‘2007 HERITAGE LECTURE SERIES’ CONTINUES WITH
PULITIZER PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR JACK RAKOVE
WILLIAMSBURG, Va. – Pulitzer Prize-winning author and scholar Dr. Jack Rakove will speak at Jamestown Settlement on Saturday, September 8, at 7 p.m., as part of the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation’s “2007 Heritage Lecture Series.”
Rakove, the William Robertson Coe Professor of History and American Studies at Stanford University, will present “Creating the American Mirror of Representation: From Jamestown (1619) to Philadelphia (1787).”
The lecture will examine how American ideas and practices of political representation evolved from modest beginnings at Jamestown in 1619 with Virginia’s first legislative assembly to more complex forms of political accountability by the time of the American Revolution. Rakove will explore how colonists embraced John Adams’ opinion in 1776 that a representative assembly should mirror the larger society, a radical idea for its time but a natural progression from the earliest assembly in 1619.
His book, Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution, won the 1997 Pulitzer Prize in history and the Fraunces Tavern Museum Book Prize.
Other published works by Rakove include The Beginnings of National Politics: An Interpretive History of the Continental Congress, James Madison and the Creation of the American Republic and Declaring Rights: A Brief History with Documents.
Rakove has served as the president of the Society for the History of the Early American Republic, and on the council for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture at the College of William and Mary. A professor at Stanford University since 1980, Rakove holds a doctorate from Harvard University and a bachelor’s degree from Haverford College.
Future speakers in the 2007 Heritage Lecture Series are Michael Beschloss, best-selling author and NBC News Presidential Historian, on October 6 (sponsored by the AMERIGROUP Foundation); and W. Richard West, Jr., member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma and Peace Chief of the Southern Cheyenne, and founding director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, on November 3.
All lectures take place at 7 p.m. in Jamestown Settlement’s Robins Foundation Theater. Admission is free. Theater and overflow seating is limited. Advance reservations should be made at (757) 253-4415 or rsvp.lecture@jyf.virginia.gov. Jamestown Settlement is located on State Route 31 just southwest of Williamsburg. For directions, go to www.historyisfun.org/General-Information.htm.
