National Book Award Winner Joseph J. Ellis to

Give Lecture at Middlebury College on Oct. 1

Historian Joseph J. Ellis, who won the National Book

Award for “American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson”

(Knopf, 1997), will deliver the Charles S. Grant Memorial Lecture

on Friday, Oct. 1 at 8 p.m. in Middlebury College’s Mead Chapel

on Hepburn Road, off College Street (Route 125). The title of

his talk is “What Jefferson Did: The Jefferson Legacy Today.”

The lecture is free and open to the public.

Joseph J. Ellis, the Ford Foundation Professor of

History at Mount Holyoke College, is a nationally recognized scholar

on American history from colonial times through the early decades

of the republic. “American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas

Jefferson” explores the complexities of Jefferson’s character

and analyzes the central role of his political philosophy in the

unfolding of the American experience. He is currently at work

on a new book titled “Founding Brothers,” about the

entire revolutionary generation.

Ellis’ work, from scholarly articles and essays to

reviews and opinion pieces, has been published in a variety of

publications, including American Heritage, The Boston Globe, The

Washington Post, The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, The New

Republic, and Civilization. He has also appeared many times on

C-SPAN, “Fox News,” and “The NewsHour with Jim

Lehrer.”

Ellis, who received an undergraduate degree from

the College of William and Mary and a master’s and doctorate from

Yale University, has taught at Yale, West Point, and, since 1972,

at Mount Holyoke College. A former U.S. Army officer, Ellis has

lectured at the Army War College and at West Point on the Vietnam

War and on the education of Army officers in the post-Cold War

era. He was also a consultant and appeared as a participant in

the Ken Burns documentary “Thomas Jefferson,” which

aired on PBS in February of 1997. He also co-authored an article

which accompanied the DNA study of Jefferson’s descendants by

Sally Hemings in the November 1998 issue of Nature magazine.

Professor Ellis has received many honors and fellowships,

including a Guggenheim and a National Endowment for the Humanities

Senior Research Fellowship.

Ellis’ talk will be the 24th Grant Memorial Lecture,

established in honor of the late Charles S. Grant, a member of

the Middlebury College history department for several years prior

to his untimely death in 1961. Previous speakers who have delivered

the Grant Memorial Lecture, which maintains a focus on American

history, range from David McCullough, author of the prize-winning

biography “Truman,” to Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., who

served from 1961-1963 as special assistant to President John F.

Kennedy.

For more information, contact Travis Jacobs in the

history department of Middlebury College at 802-443-5315.