*As part of the Provost's Inaugural Lecture Series, Holger Hoock will deliver an Inaugural Lecture as J. Carroll Amundson Professor of British History.

Pitt hosts the oldest chair in British History in the United States, endowed half a century ago this academic year.
In this talk, as a part of the Provost’s Inaugural Lecture series, Holger Hoock will discuss work in progress on
violence in the American Revolutionary War as a civil war in the British Empire and in America. Most modern
histories focus on the Revolution’s ideals and tend to marginalize the physical and psychological ordeals it
entailed for so many participants. Reflecting on the geopolitical and cultural contexts of that historiographical
marginalization of violence since the late nineteenth century, Hoock will consider how we might write violence
back into the story, and to what effect. British History has long lost the special status it once enjoyed in the
American academy. Its continuing relevance will depend on how it positions itself in relation to European,
Atlantic, and wider transnational contexts. All faculty and students are most welcome. The lecture will be
followed by a reception.