A fellow’s forum with Michael A. McDonnell, Professor and Chair of History at the University of Sydney, Australia, from June 27, 2024.
About the Presentation
Michael A. McDonnell is currently working on a monograph based on dozens of autobiographies written by those who lived through the Age of Revolution. This largely neglected archive of memoirs written by a wide array of people who lived through this tumultuous era unearths a collection of voices that gives us a view of this era through the lived experiences of men and women whose lives were turned upside-down and often ruined by the cataclysm of war. The mythic tale of a Revolution in favor of liberty and the creation of a new nation dedicated to liberty and equality was unrecognizable to them. Instead, they wrote of bloodshed, separations, betrayals, and flight. They told harrowing tales of hardship, grief, and survival - through war and peace. While these early memoirists quietly and often desperately scratched out their own truths - they engaged in their own revolutionary act, pioneering the genre of autobiography. They sought to make meaning of their lives through their pens, even if their voices often went unheard.
About Michael A. McDonnell
Michael A. McDonnell is currently Professor and Chair of History at the University of Sydney. He is the author of numerous prize-winning articles, essays, and books on the American Revolution, early American history, and Indigenous history, including The Politics of War (2007), Remembering the Revolution (2013), Masters of Empire: Great Lakes Indians and the Making of America (2015), and Facing Empire: Indigenous Experiences in a Revolutionary Age (2018). He is currently working on several major research projects, including an examination of the place of the American Revolution in Black American life (with Clare Corbould) and more recently a study of the memoirs and autobiographies of forced migrants in both the US and Australia from the Age of Revolution to today (with Niro Kandasamy).