Jefferson & Lafayette
Celebrating the 200th Anniversary of the
Marquis de Lafayette's Visit to Monticello
Wednesday, October 23, 2024
Monticello's West Lawn
5:30 p.m. – Walkthrough tours and cocktail reception
6:30 p.m. – Program
featuring
Bill Barker as Thomas Jefferson
Historical Interpreter, Thomas Jefferson Foundation
Dr. Iris de Rode
Postdoctoral Fellow at the Karsh Institute of Democracy at the University of Virginia
Dr. Jane Kamensky
President, Thomas Jefferson Foundation
J. Jefferson Looney
Daniel P. Jordan Editor, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson: Retirement Series
Mark Schneider as the Marquis de Lafayette
Historical Interpreter, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation
Business attire
Parking available at the David M. Rubenstein Visitor Center
This event is generously sponsored by Martin Horn and Truist Wealth
Please complete the form below to register for the
Jefferson & Lafayette Fall Cabinet Evening Conversation
The favor of your reply is requested by October 9th
Veteran historical actor-interpreter Bill Barker is widely recognized as the nation’s foremost interpreter of Thomas Jefferson. After portraying Thomas Jefferson at Colonial Williamsburg for 26 years, Barker joined the Thomas Jefferson Foundation at Monticello in 2019. Barker began interpreting Jefferson in 1984 — fittingly, at Independence Hall in Philadelphia. Combining the tools of theater with rigorous historical scholarship, his approach explores Jefferson’s life and times, and how it relates to our world today.
Barker has performed as Jefferson around the country and around the world, at sites including the White House, the U.S. Capitol, the Palace of Versailles, and more. He has been featured as Jefferson in numerous publications including TIME, People, and Southern Living, and has appeared as Jefferson on ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, C-SPAN and Comedy Central’s Colbert Report. Monticello guests encounter Barker as Mr. Jefferson in regularly-scheduled programming at Monticello. He also contributes to educational outreach efforts, including electronic field trips and livestream programs, and represents Monticello at special events around the country.
Iris de Rode received her doctorate from the Université de Paris VIII in November 2019, for her dissertation entitled François-Jean de Chastellux (1734-1788), un soldat-philosophe dans le monde atlantique à l'époque des Lumières. Her dissertation was published by Éditions Honoré Champion, 2022, and she recently won the Prix Guizot of the Académie Française for "best history book of the year" for it. Together with her PhD supervisor, Prof. Bertrand van Ruymbeke, she co-authored Le Journal de Dumas (16 juin-6 octobre 1781) and Sur les traces de l'indépendance des États-Unis (Monfaucon: Éditions Jean-Jacques Wuillaume, 2018).
de Rode is currently working on a new English book titled "En route to Revolution" that will be published by the University of Virginia Press in 2025. She has received 20+ fellowships for her work, including from Thomas Jefferson's Monticello, George Washington's Mount Vernon, the Society of the Cincinnati, and the American Philosophical Society. de Rode taught American and Transatlantic history at the French University SciencesPo Paris as an adjunct faculty member from 2013 to 2022. She is also working on public history initiatives with the National Park Service, the Washington Rochambeau Revolutionary Route Association, the Philadelphia Museum of the American Revolution, George Washington's Mount Vernon, and the French embassy in Washington DC. She is the US committee member of “America 2026,” and just started her postdoctoral fellowship a the Karsh Institute of Democracy.
Dr. Jane Kamensky serves as president of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, the private nonprofit that owns and operates Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello in Charlottesville, Virginia.
For thirty years, Kamensky worked as a professor and higher education leader. Before joining Monticello, she served as Jonathan Trumbull Professor of American History at Harvard University and Pforzheimer Foundation Director of the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America at Harvard Radcliffe Institute. In her years as Director of the Schlesinger Library, Kamensky 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.
Kamensky is the author or editor of numerous books, including A Revolution in Color: The World of John Singleton Copley (2016), which won four major prizes and was a finalist for several others; and the authoritative Oxford Handbook of the American Revolution, co-edited with the late Edward G. Gray. Her most recent book, Candida Royalle and the Sexual Revolution, was published by W.W. Norton in March 2024.
A former Commissioner of the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, Kamensky serves as a Trustee of the Museum of the American Revolution, a member of the National Advisory Council of More Perfect, and as one of the principal investigators on the NEH/Department of Education-funded initiative, Educating for American Democracy, among many other public history roles.
J. Jefferson Looney is the Daniel P. Jordan Editor of The Papers of Thomas Jefferson at Monticello. He is the founding editor-in-chief of the Jefferson Papers Retirement Series, sponsored by the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, Inc., Charlottesville, Virginia. Twenty volumes of this definitive edition of Jefferson’s writings and correspondence between 1809 and 1826 have been published, and a twenty-first is in press. Dr. Looney was formerly editor and project director of the Dictionary of Virginia Biography, and he is a past president of the Association for Documentary Editing. He is the author or editor of several works on the history of Princeton University, where he did his doctoral work in British history.
Mark Schneider is a Nation Builder at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation and portrays the Marquis de Lafayette. Mark has been portraying the Marquis since 1999, but has also portrayed other historical characters for Colonial Williamsburg as well as for documentaries and film. Some of his other characters are the infamous Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton, General Rochambeau and his most famous character being Napoleon in which he has appeared in many European countries more than 60 times, for historic events since 2005.
Established in 1993, the Evening Conversation series provides an opportunity for friends and supporters of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation to explore common interests with the nation’s preeminent historians, scholars, and thought leaders. Over 30 years, we have hosted nearly 150 of these gatherings, featuring notable presentations by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Jon Meacham, retired Supreme Court of Virginia Justice John Charles Thomas, and journalist Cokie Roberts, as well as musical performances by the Victory Hall Opera and Chesapeake Symphony Orchestra.
Questions? Please contact Monticello Events at events@monticello.org or (434) 984-9821.
Listen to this podcast about Lafayette's twelve-day visit with his old friend, Thomas Jefferson, which was marked by dinners and celebrations. It struck many as memorable at the time, including two men enslaved at Monticello for whom, even decades later, Lafayette's visit held special meaning.
