Jane Kamensky to Speak at W&L Kamensky, president and CEO of Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, will discuss the friendship and rivalry between Thomas Jefferson and John Adams on Oct. 19.

By Emily Innes Stanley
October 8, 2026

Jane Kamensky, Jonathan Trumbull Professor of American History Emerita at Harvard University and president and CEO of Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, will deliver a lecture at Washington and Lee University at 5:15 p.m. on Oct. 19 in University Chapel.

The event is free and open to the public.

In her lecture, titled “Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and the Lost Art of Civic Friendship,” Kamensky will discuss the personal themes of the friendship and rivalry between Jefferson and Adams. A historian of the Atlantic world and the United States, Kamensky’s research interests include the histories of family, culture and everyday life. Lucas Morel, W&L’s John K. Boardman Jr. Professor of Politics, Brian Alexander, associate professor of politics at W&L, and Eric Wilson, executive director of the Rockbridge Historical Society, will also offer remarks before opening Kamensky’s discussion.

Kamensky received her bachelor’s degree and doctorate – both in history – from Yale University. Before joining Harvard’s faculty, she taught for two decades at Brandeis University and served as the Mary Ann Lippitt Professor of American History at Brown University. Her book, “A Revolution in Color: The World of John Singleton Copley” (2016), received four major prizes, including the New-York Historical Society’s Barbara and David Zalaznick Book Prize in American History. Kamensky’s work has been supported by fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Guggenheim Foundation, among others. She has served as the president and CEO of Monticello since 2024.

This event is supported by the Society of the Cincinnati in the State of Virginia.