
Register for Keynote
Registration required for each of the three conference events: January 30/Day 1, January 31/Day 2, and Keynote Speaker Annette Gordon-Reed
New Directions in the Northwest Ordinance
Keynote Address: Annette Gordon-Reed and the Meaning of the Northwest Ordinance and the United States at 250
Annette Gordon-Reed is an American law professor and Pulitzer Prize-winning historian. She is currently the Carl M. Loeb University Professor at Harvard University, where she is also a professor of history in the university’s Faculty of Arts & Sciences.

Gordon-Reed is noted for transforming scholarship on Thomas Jefferson, particularly regarding his relationship with Sally Hemings and her children. She was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for History and the National Book Award for Nonfiction in 2008 for her groundbreaking work on the Hemings family of Monticello. In 2010, she received the National Humanities Medal and a MacArthur Fellowship, also known as the MacArthur “Genius Award.”

Since 2018, she has served as a trustee of the National Humanities Center in Research Triangle Park, NC. She was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2019. Gordon-Reed’s contributions to historical scholarship and her dedication to uncovering and presenting the complexities of American history have made her a prominent and influential figure in both academic and public spheres.
Her books include the Pulitzer-Prizing winning On Juneteenth, Most Blessed of the Patriarchs: Thomas Jefferson and the Empire of the Imagination, Andrew Johnson: The American Presidents Series: The 17th President, 1865-1869, the Pulitzer-Prize winning The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family, and National Book Award winner Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy, among others.
This event is free and open to the public. Free parking is available on-site at The Fawcett Center.