Ken Burns Premieres: The American Revolution

Jamelle Bouie

Jamelle Bouie is a columnist for the New York Times Opinion section.

Dr. Vincent Brown

Dr. Vincent Brown is the Charles Warren Professor of American History and Professor of African and African American Studies at Harvard University. He has published two prize-winning books about the history of slavery: The Reaper’s Garden: Death and Power in the World of Atlantic Slavery (2008) and Tacky’s Revolt: The Story of an Atlantic Slave War (2020). The author of numerous articles and reviews in scholarly journals, he is also Principal Investigator and Curator for the animated thematic map Slave Revolt in Jamaica, 1760-1761: A Cartographic Narrative (2013); he was Producer and Director of Research for the award-winning television documentary Herskovits at the Heart of Blackness (2009), broadcast nationally on the PBS series Independent Lens; he was the executive producer and host for The Bigger Picture (2022), co-produced with WNET for PBS Digital Studios; and he was executive producer, writer, and host for How Do You Remember the Days of Slavery? (2024). He is co-founder of Timestamp Media, which explores the history that connects people and places across the world.

Ken Burns

Ken Burns (photo: Stephanie Berger)

Ken Burns has been making documentary films for almost fifty years. Since the Academy Award nominated Brooklyn Bridge in 1981, Ken has gone on to direct and produce some of the most acclaimed historical documentaries ever made, including The Civil War; Baseball; Jazz; The War; The National Parks: America’s Best Idea; Prohibition; The Roosevelts: An Intimate History; The Vietnam War; Country Music; The U.S. and the Holocaust; The American Buffalo; and, most recently, Leonardo da Vinci.

Future film projects include The American Revolution, Emancipation to Exodus, and LBJ & the Great Society, among others.

Ken’s films have been honored with dozens of major awards, including seventeen Emmy Awards, two Grammy Awards and two Oscar nominations. In September of 2008, at the News & Documentary Emmy Awards, Ken was honored by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences with a Lifetime Achievement Award. In November of 2022, Ken was inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame.

Dr. Jane Kamensky

Dr. Jane Kamensky currently serves as President and CEO of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation and previously served as the Jonathan Trumbull Professor of American History and the Carl and Lily Pforzheimer Foundation Director of the Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America at Harvard Radcliffe Institute. In her years as Director of the Schlesinger Library, she successfully worked to raise the profile of the library to the most preeminent of its kind in the world by partnering with an international network of diverse scholars and thought leaders.

Dr. Kamensky is the author or co-author of seven books spanning four centuries of American history, including the prize-winning A Revolution in Color: The World of John Singleton Copley (2016). She is also a member of the author team on A People and a Nation, one of the preeminent textbooks in American history, and the co-editor, with Edward G. Gray, of The Oxford Handbook of the American Revolution. A principal investigator for the NEH-DoE funded social studies initiative Educating for American Democracy, Dr. Kamensky is committed to civic education and engagement, which deeply aligns with Monticello’s mission.

7:00 pm - Preview screening of Ken Burns's upcoming series, The American Revolution

8:00 – 8:45 pm - Panel Conversation featuring:

Dr. Vincent Brown, Charles Warren Professor of American History and Professor of African and African American Studies at Harvard University
Ken Burns, award-winning filmmaker
Dr. Jane Kamensky, President of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation 
Moderated by Jamelle Bouie, award-winning New York Times opinion columnist and public historian

This event will be held in the V. Earl Dickinson Theater at Piedmont Virginia Community College (PVCC) in Charlottesville, Virginia.

GPS Address: 501 College Dr, Charlottesville, VA 22902 

Complimentary parking will be available