The American Revolution told from inside the home. Prior to the American Revolution, the urban centers of colonial North America had little direct experience of war. With the outbreak of violence, British forces occupied every major city, invading the most private of spaces: the home. Building on a stunning wealth of primary sources to vividly capture daily life during the Revolution through the eyes and ears of those who intimately experienced it, this talk explores how men and women of all races, statuses, and states of freedom navigated the war and understood its implications for their lives, families, and the nascent American Republic.
Lauren Duval is an associate professor of history at the University of Oklahoma. Her research focuses on women, gender, and families during the era of the American Revolution. She is the author of The Home Front: Revolutionary Households, Military Occupation, and the Making of American Independence (Omohundro Institute and University of North Carolina, 2025), which among other honors, won the American Historical Association’s Beveridge Family Prize in American History, the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic's Mary Kelley Prize in Women’s and Gender History, the Society for Military History's Distinguished Book Award for a First Book, and was a co-winner for the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic’s Best Book Prize. Her work has appeared in several edited volumes on the American Revolution and she has also published an award-winning article in the William and Mary Quarterly. Her research has been supported by numerous fellowships, including most recently, as a 2024–2026 Gibson Fellow at the University of Virginia’s Karsh Institute of Democracy.
