Annette Gordon-Reed: Thomas Jefferson and the Empire of the Imagination

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Worshipped, pilloried, and forever debated. Such is the fate of Thomas Jefferson, whose actions and ideas — more than those of any of the other Founding Fathers —still divide Americans two centuries later. Pulitzer Prize-winning author and Harvard Professor Annette Gordon-Reed will extend the analysis of Jefferson in light of prevailing attitudes towards politics, slavery, genetics, and gender, thereby giving new insights into his views on Christianity, slavery, race and philosophy.

This event takes place as part of the Chalke Valley History Festival in Broad Chalke, near Salisbury in Wiltshire. 

Book tickets

Annette Gordon-Reed is the author of the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize–winning The Hemingses of Monticello and is the Charles Warren Professor of American Legal History at Harvard Law School and the Carol K. Pforzheimer Professor at the Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study at Harvard University. She was Harmsworth Visiting Professor of American History at the RAI and Queen's College in 2014-15.