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Back for its 56th year, Living Room Learning was started by Sweet Briar College alumnae. The series offers university-level lectures for lifelong learners who seek to expand their knowledge without having to take a final exam. Join us for this 7-week daytime lecture course.
True to its name, Living Room Learning was organized by a group of Atlanta women who had a passion for learning past their university years attending Sweet Briar College and held classes in the living rooms of their homes. Over the years, lecturers have included some of the greatest scholarly minds in Georgia discussing topics related to history, art, literature, and much more.
The series gradually expanded and became more popular, growing from 12 women to hundreds of people, necessitating the move outside of living rooms and to a formal lecture hall.
Atlanta History Center became the host venue in 2013, and now coordinates the series.
We hope you will join us for our next series which will explore the origins of the American Revolution in honor of the forthcoming 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Lecture topics will look at the intellectual traditions of the 18th century that drove the Revolution, cultural practices in the colonies, Native American history, women in the lead-up to Revolution, and more, concluding with the battles of Lexington and Concord.
The series will begin on January 15, 2025 and will continue each Wednesday until February 26, 2025. All lectures will take place in McElreath Hall. Doors open at 1:30pm and lectures begin promptly at 2pm with a brief intermission. Parking is free.
Lecture Schedule
Patrick Allitt, Cahoon Family Professor of American History
- British and American readers were influenced by David Hume, Adam Smith, John Locke, and Isaac Newton, whose ideas guided their thoughts about the rights and wrongs of the colonial situation in the 1760s and 1770s. The lecture will talk about the era’s changing understanding of politics, religion, social structure, and the economy in the leadup to the Revolution.
- Patrick Allitt is Cahoon Family Professor of American History. He was an undergraduate at Oxford in England (1974-1977), a graduate student at the University of California Berkeley (Ph.D., 1986), and held postdoctoral fellowships at Harvard Divinity School and Princeton University. At Emory since 1988, he teaches courses on American intellectual, environmental, and religious history, on Victorian Britain, and on the Great Books.
Jeffrey Young, Principal Senior Lecturer of History at Georgia State University
- In 1763, England pushed aside its European rivals to emerge as the supreme colonial power in North America. Over the next 15 years, however, its ability to govern America eroded amid a series of political controversies. During this critical period, the colonial political culture pivoted towards new understandings of liberty and slavery, setting the stage for the American Revolution.
- Jeffrey Young teaches history at Georgia State University, where he offers classes on early American history and Georgia history. His research has focused on slavery in America and on the intersections between American political culture and American family life. His book, Domesticating Slavery: The Master Class in Georgia and South Carolina, was published by the University of North Carolina Press and his articles have appeared in the Journal of Southern History and the Georgia Historical Quarterly.
James Brooks, Carl and Sally Gable Distinguished Professor of History at the University of Georgia
- In 1763, England pushed aside its European rivals to emerge as the supreme colonial power in North America. Over the next 15 years, however, its ability to govern America eroded amid a series of political controversies. During this critical period, the colonial political culture pivoted towards new understandings of liberty and slavery, setting the stage for the American Revolution.
- James Brooks is the Carl and Sally Gable Distinguished Professor of History at the University of Georgia. He is an interdisciplinary scholar of the Indigenous and Colonial past, having held professorial appointments at the University of Maryland, UC Santa Barbara, and UC Berkeley, as well as fellowships at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, the School for Advanced Research in Santa Fe, and Vanderbilt University’s Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities.
Melissa Blair, History Department Chair and Professor at Auburn University
- How did region shape a woman’s life in colonial America? What about race? In this talk we will examine the lives of enslaved and free women throughout the colonies, thinking about how region and race impacted their lives profoundly even when they were all governed by similar laws.
- Melissa Blair is the History Department Chair and Professor at Auburn University. She is the author of three books about women’s history in the United States, with a focus on women and politics in the 20th Her research has been supported by the Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy Presidential Libraries, Auburn’s Office of Research & Economic Development, the Doris G. Quinn Foundation, the Charles Redd Center for Western History at BYU, and the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture at Duke University. She joined the Auburn Faculty in 2015.
Joseph Crespino, Senior Associate Dean of Faculty and Divisional Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences and the Jimmy Carter Professor of History at Emory University
- One of the consistent themes of the writings of the Founding Fathers was the essential relationship between virtue and self-governance. Their ideas were rooted in ancient Greek and Roman texts, yet they were also informed by Enlightenment era concepts of freedom and individualism. But what did the Founding Fathers mean by virtue exactly? And how should we think about their understanding in light of the many unvirtuous actions and enterprises in which we know many of them were involved? This lecture explores these questions and others as it tries to understand what political virtue might look like in the 21st century United States.
- Joseph Crespino is the Senior Associate Dean of Faculty and Divisional Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences and the Jimmy Carter Professor of History at Emory University. Crespino has published three books, has co-edited a collection of essays, and has written for academic journals as well as for popular forums such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, Politico, and the Wall Street Journal.
Michael Winship, E. Merton Coulter Professor of History Department at the University of Georgia
- English colonization of North America began at the same time as extensive witch prosecutions in Europe. Pursuing those prosecutions were coalitions consisting of godly rulers committed to bringing witches to justice, learned ministers who hated witches as Satan’s shock troops in his war against God and Christianity, and ordinary persons fearing that witches would turn their occult powers on them. In British North America, such coalitions could be found only in the puritan colonies, but these colonial coalitions were effectively broken up by the murderous debacle of the 1692 Salem witchcraft trials. Colonial fear of witches, however, did not disappear with the collapse of prosecutions. Rumors, suspicions, and failed efforts to get the courts to do their duty again, along occasional outbursts of vigilante justice, continued well into the period of the American Revolution.
- Michael P. Winship is the E. Merton Coulter Professor of History at the University of Georgia. He is an expert on the religious history of early modern England and America and the author of numerous books on puritanism.
Patrick Allitt, Cahoon Family Professor of American History
- This lecture will describe the opening scenes of the Revolutionary War in April 1775, at a time when it was still not obvious that the Americans would declare their independence (an event that was then still more than a year in the future). It will show how George Washington took command of the Continental Army and how the first bloodshed radicalized a generation of New Englanders.
- Patrick Allitt is Cahoon Family Professor of American History. He was an undergraduate at Oxford in England (1974-1977), a graduate student at the University of California Berkeley (Ph.D., 1986), and held postdoctoral fellowships at Harvard Divinity School and Princeton University. At Emory since 1988, he teaches courses on American intellectual, environmental, and religious history, on Victorian Britain, and on the Great Books.
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Programs & Events
Our Author Talks aim to connect writers with readers for thought-provoking discussions about life and literature.
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Buildings & Grounds
McElreath Hall houses many important components of Atlanta History Center, including Kenan Research Center and Woodruff Auditorium.
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