Quaff & Quill: Book Talk with Alec Zuercher Reichardt
2025-10-29 18:00 - 19:00 (America/New_York) | Ryan Library and via Zoom
Join the Institute for Thomas Paine Studies for a talk with Professor Alec Zuercher Reichardt (University of Missouri) about his book Roads to Power, Roads to Crisis: The War for the American Interior and the Infrastructural Routes of Revolution (2025) to learn about imperial competition to control communication networks during the Seven Years’ War and the American Revolution.
Light refreshments will be served.

This is a hybrid event. Please join us in person or online via Zoom.
IN PERSON REGISTRATION
Ryan Library
on the campus of Iona University
715 North Ave.
New Rochelle, NY 10804
Map and Directions
CLICK HERE TO JOIN THE ZOOM WEBINAR
Presented in partnership with the Huguenot & New Rochelle Historical Association

Lapidus Lecture in Paine Studies
2025-11-06 17:00 - 18:30 | LaPenta School of Business, Henry Lecture Hall, Iona University & Virtual via Zoom
Join us for the Second Annual Lapidus Lecture in Paine Studies featuring Joyce Chaplin, Ph.D., the James Duncan Phillips Professor of Early American History in the Department of History at Harvard University. Professor Chaplin will deliver a lecture titled “Tom Paine’s Sunshine Patriotism: Telling the Truth About the Weather” on Thursday, November 6, 2025 beginning at 5:00 p.m. in Henry Lecture Hall, LaPenta School of Business, on the campus of Iona University. Attendees may also watch the lecture via Zoom webinar. A reception will follow.
At Harvard University, Professor Chaplin teaches the histories of science, climate, colonialism, and environment. She is also an Affiliated Faculty Member in Harvard’s Department of the History of Science, an affiliate of the Department of Landscape Architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, a Faculty Member of Harvard’s American Studies Program, and is on the Faculty Steering Committee for the Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability. She serves on the Faculty Executive Board of the Harvard Museums of Science and Culture and is a Trustee of the Massachusetts Historical Society, the first historical society in the United States (1791). A former Fulbright Scholar to the United Kingdom, she has taught at six different institutions on two continents, an island, and a peninsula, and in a maritime studies program on the Atlantic Ocean. Back on dry land, she was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2019 and of the American Philosophical Society in 2020.
An award-winning author, Professor Chaplin’s major works include An Anxious Pursuit: Agricultural Innovation and Modernity in the Lower South, 1730-1815 (1993), Subject Matter: Technology, the Body, and Science on the Anglo-American Frontier, 1500-1676 (2001), The First Scientific American: Benjamin Franklin and the Pursuit of Genius (2006), Round about the Earth: Circumnavigation from Magellan to Orbit (2012), and (coauthored), The New Worlds of Thomas Robert Malthus: Rereading the Principle of Population (2016). She is the editor of Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography: A Norton Critical Edition (2012) and An Essay on the Principle of Population: A Norton Critical Edition (2017), and is a coeditor of two essay collections, Food in Time and Place (2014) and Genealogies of Genius (2016). Her work has been translated into French, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Estonian, and, forthcoming, into Chinese. Her reviews and essays have appeared in the Times Literary Supplement, the New York Times Book Review, the London Review of Books, the Wall Street Journal and Aeon. Her most recent book is The Franklin Stove: An Unintended American Revolution (2025), for which she received a 2018 Guggenheim Fellowship.
For in person registration, click here.
To register for the Zoom webinar, click here.

Quaff & Quill: Book Talk with Whitney Nell Stewart
2025-12-10 18:00 - 19:00 | American Irish Historical Society, 991 5th Avenue, New York City, 991 5th Avenue, New York, NY, 10028, United States
Join us for a conversation with historian Whitney Nell Stewart, the Executive Director of Coastal Georgia Historical Society on St. Simons Island, about her award-winning book This Is Our Home: Slavery and Struggle on Southern Plantations (2023).
This hybrid program will be hosted at the American Irish Historical Society, 991 5th Avenue, New York City, and a livestream will be made available via Zoom. Light refreshments will be served.
Click here to register to attend the event in person at the American Irish Historical Society.
Click here to register to watch the livestream via Zoom webinar.

Common Sense at 250: Legacies of Democracy from Paine to Today
2026-01-09 - 2026-01-10 | Lewes and Sussex, England and virtually via Zoom
In-person Registration Links
FRIDAY, JANUARY 9, 2026 at the University of Sussex — In-person registration: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/common-sense-at-250-legacies-of-democracy-from-paine-to-today-tickets-1760714497459?aff=oddtdtcreator.
SATURDAY, JANUARY 10, 2026 at Bull House, Lewes — In-person registration: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/common-sense-at-250-legacies-of-democracy-from-paine-to-today-tickets-1769369715449?aff=oddtdtcreator. (please note in-person registration is currently limited to conference presenters at this time, virtual registration is open to all).
SATURDAY, JANUARY 10, 2026 at the White Hart, Lewes — In-person registration for the evening reception: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/common-sense-at-250-day-two-closing-reception-tickets-1838344390559?aff=oddtdtcreator.
*Please note that due to the historic nature of the buildings, in-person registration capacity is limited for the sessions at Bull House on Saturday, January 10, and for the closing reception that evening at the Headstrong Room at the White Hart. Please notify us if you are no longer able to attend so the spot may be opened to others on the waitlist.
Conference Program
Friday, January 9, 2026: The University of Sussex
Coffee and tea: 9:00am- 9:30am
Sponsored by the University of Sussex

Session One: 9:30am – 11:00am
“Paine, Commemoration, and the Politics of Memory”
Chair and Commentator: Scott Cleary
Virtual registration: https://iona.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_2xSvh8BqTUKQ63NdnerNUw

Josh Dight, “Common Sense as Cultural Memory in the radical ‘paper pantheon’, 1831-1849”

Lyne Hervey-Passée, “Ink, Imagination, and Algorithm: Returning to Common Sense” (virtual)

Anthony Kalume, Title forthcoming

Robert Wolff, “America at 250: Historical Originalism, Fractured Imagination, and Public Memory”

Session Two: 11:15am – 12:45pm
“Paine and the Lasting Language of Revolution”
Chair and Commentator: Robb Dunphy
Virtual registration: https://iona.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_d55nn8qWQ7SVYzWNjDjiBQ

Lucas Barcos Rodrigues, “From Swine to Citizens: The Radical Afterlives of Paine in the British Swinish Multitude”

Silvia Guselli, “Liberty Applied and Contested: Twain, Callahan, and the Ideological Afterlife of Paine’s Common Sense”

Catherine Packham, “‘Words of sound’: Common Sense, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Legacies for Political Speech”

Emily Sneff, ““Es ist jetzt unter der Presse”: German Translation in Philadelphia in 1776” (virtual)

Lunch break: 12:45pm – 2:15pm (on your own)

Session Three: 2:30pm to 4:00pm
“Common Sense in Conversation: Influence and Authorship in the Atlantic World”
Chair and Commentator: Liz Covart
Virtual registration: https://iona.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_Xr31hmB8Rzm9iy35ESacXQ

Jon Chandler, “Continental Republicanism: Paine, Print, and the Politics of Place, 1775–1777″

Tom Cutterham, “Common Sense, Civil Liberty, and the Transatlantic Revolutionary Tradition”

Adam Lebovitz, “Thomas Paine’s Maritime Imagination”

Karen Racine, “The Cause of All Mankind: Thomas Paine and Spanish American Independence”

Session Four: 4:15pm to 5:45pm
Plenary with Greg Claeys: “Thomas Paine and the Three Revolutions that Weren’t”
Chair and Commentator: Iain McDaniel
Virtual registration: https://iona.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_49kf0Om2RgK_iuUknw3a-g

Reception: 5:45pm – 7:00pm
Sponsored by the University of Sussex

Saturday, January 10th, 2026: Bull House, Lewes
Coffee and tea: 8:30am- 9:00am
Sponsored by the Institute for Thomas Paine Studies at Iona University

Session Five: 9:00am – 10:30am
“A Template for Democracy: Common Sense and Civic Life”
Chair and Commentator: Joseph Adelman

Leanne O’Boyle, Common Sense and Public History

Nicole Mahoney, Common Sense and Women’s and Gender History

Jeanne Sheehan Zaino, Common Sense and Contemporary Politics

Please note that this session includes a live recording for a special episode of the Ben Franklin’s world podcast that will be publicly available and there is no virtual option.

Session Six: 10:45am – 12:15pm
“Common Sense and Evolving Democratic Institutions”
Chair and Commentator: Emma Hart
Virtual registration: https://iona.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_wWiilXotRq20KVbLmS5IqQ

Samuel Burry, “Paine and Intergenerational Rights: From Common Sense to Agrarian Justice”

Daniel Gomes de Carvalho, “From Common Sense to Constitutional Balance: Thomas Paine and the Bicameral Turn after the French Revolution” (virtual)

Colin Manton, “Reform, Radicalism, and Reaction: Bright Politics, 1832”

David Williams, “Democracy and the Two Times of Common Sense”

Lunch break: 12:15pm – 1:45pm (on your own)

Tour of the Town of Lewes: 1:45pm-2:15pm (please meet at the entrance to Bull House)

Session Seven: 2:30pm – 4:00pm
“Revolutionary Legacies in Lewes”
Chair and Commentator: Leanne O’Boyle
Virtual registration: https://iona.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_rnRk1eZSTR6Vh_qw7bxCFQ

Deborah Gage

Rebecca Stott

Paul Myles

Session Eight: 4:15pm to 5:45pm
Keynote with Danielle Allen
Chair and Commentator: Nora Slonimsky
Virtual registration: https://iona.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_81-mpDJ1SjS9_vXD3rK3Aw

Reception: 6:00pm – 7:30pm
The Headstrong Room at the White Hart
Sponsored by the Institute for Thomas Paine Studies at Iona University

Read the Call for Papers here.
