SHREVEPORT – Two-hundred-and-fifty years have passed since the “shot heard ‘round the world” started the American Revolution and ultimately paved the way for one of the world’s longest continuous representative democracies.
Dr. Alexander Mikaberidze, the Ruth Herring Noel Chair at LSUS in charge of the Noel Collection, organized the two-day symposium “To Begin the World Anew: The American Revolution at 250” that will examine the revolution in the broader global context and its impacts on different groups of people (women, for example).
The free symposium will take place Nov. 6-7, from 6:30-8 p.m. each night, at the Robinson Film Center. Click here to register fo the event.
Four historians will approach the American Revolution from complementary but distinct perspectives.
“Our discussions will naturally explore the traditional military narrative of Americans confronting the world’s foremost imperial power,” Mikaberidze said. “But we’ll also explore how leadership and transatlantic strategy shaped the outcome of the war, revealing the Revolution not as an isolated event but as part of a worldwide contest among empires.
“We’ll look at the Revolution’s political and social dimensions as well.”
Historians Andrew O’Shaughnessy (University of Virginia), John Maass (National Museum of the U.S. Army), Holly Mayer (Duquesne University) and Edward Lengel (Independent Historian) will offer insight into their areas of expertise.
Mikaberidze, a world-renowned scholar of European history in the 18th and 19th centuries, said better understanding how the American “democratic experiment” began will offer clues as to how its withstood myriad challenges and threats.
“Born in rebellion and rooted in Enlightenment ideals that were radical for their time, the Republic has endured civil war, economic depression, world conflict, and profound social upheaval,” Mikaberidze said. “I think its resilience owes much to the adaptability of its institutions and to the enduring civic culture of debate and self-correction.
“The Revolution established not a fixed political order but a framework for perpetual negotiation over freedom, equality, and justice. Each generation has reinterpreted those ideals in light of new realities – from the abolition of slavery to the expansion of suffrage and civil rights. That capacity for renewal, more than any single founding document, explains the endurance of American democracy.”
Democracy is personal for Mikaberidze, a Fulbright Scholar who just returned from a months-long research trip in his native Georgia, where he grew up in the Soviet Union.
“I carry vivid memories of what it means to live under an authoritarian system,” said Mikeraberidze, who was recently honored as LSUS’s first Boyd Professor, the LSU System’s highest honor for a professor. “The atmosphere of fear and conformity was ever-present, even if not always spoken aloud.
“People learned to measure their words, to avoid questions that might attract suspicion, to keep thoughts carefully hidden. That experience taught me that the true cost of authoritarianism is not just political -- it is deeply personal. It stifles creativity, honesty, and the simple human impulse to think and speak freely.”
The free lecture series is supported by the Ruth Herring Noel Endowed Chair for the Curatorship of the James Smith Noel Collection.
