Winchell Lecture
The Richard Dean Winchell Annual History Lecture Endowment fosters and supports the College of Arts and Sciences in its mission to enhance student, faculty, and community discourse on values and cultural heritage.
"The Cause of All Mankind" - 2026 Richard Dean Winchell Lecture
Friday, April 10th, 2026 | 6:00PM | UNO's Thompson Alumni Center | Free Parking
This year’s Richard Dean Winchell Lecture will feature Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Dr. Annette Gordon-Reed (Harvard University), fresh off her involvement in Ken Burns’s latest series The American Revolution and renowned Jefferson scholar Dr. Peter Onuf (University of Virginia). The lecture will take place Friday, April 10, 2026, at 6:00 p.m. at UNO's Thompson Alumni Center. Their remarks will mark the flagship event of “The Cause of All Mankind”: A Celebration of the 250th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, a multi-day program co-hosted by UNO’s History and Political Science Departments. Dr. Gordon-Reed and Dr. Onuf will discuss their forthcoming publications—one exploring Jefferson’s complex legacy on race, and the other examining Jefferson’s vision of grassroots democracy. Their remarks will be followed by a short Q&A session. Don’t miss this exciting opportunity! Our free, public event delivers rich insights for everyone—from history buffs to students to seasoned professionals.
Parking is free after 5:00PM. Visitors may park in the on-site UNO Lot X or the overflow lot across Dodge at The First Christian Church lot. Find a UNO Dodge Campus parking map here.
Mark your calendar today and watch for registration details coming soon!
Winchell Lecturers (1997-Present)
2024-2025 Monica H. Green, "Where Do Pandemics Come From? Using Black Death Narratives To Rethink The Origin Of Pandemics (April 2025)
2023-2024 Jan Grabowski, "Producing a 'Usuable' Past: Holocaust Distortion and New Threats to the Memory of the Holocaust" (March 2024)
2022-2023 Kathleen Belew, "Understanding White Supremacy: Decoding the Actions of the White Power Movement." (April 2023)
2020-2021 Lisa Tetrault, "When Women Won the Right to Vote: An American Fiction" (September 2020)
2019-2020 Daniel R. Wildcat, "The Indigenous Human Rights Legacy of the Late Vine Deloria, Jr." (November 2019)
2018-2019 Martha S. Jones, "Birthright Citizens" (September 2018)
2017-2018 Sarah Lopez, "Mapping the Marginal Role of Design in Immigrant Detention in Texas, 1950s-present" (November 2017)
2016-2017 Philip J. Deloria, "Toward an American Indian Abstract: The Art and Politics of Mary Sully" (November 2016)
2015-2016 Graham Wrightson and Carolyn Willekes, "Marching with Alexander the Great" (April 2016)
2014-2015 Christopher Browning, "Survivor Testimony and Holocaust History: The Case of the Starachowice Factory Slave Labor Camps" (November 2014) *Listen on KIOS
2013-2014 Kim E. Nielsen, "Helen Keller, Anne Sullivan Macy, and the Blurry Lenses of Disability History" (September 2013)
2012-2013 William Tsutsui, "From Hiroshima to Fukushima: Godzilla and Postwar Japan" (October 2012)
2011-2012 Peter Coclanis, "Would Slavery Have Survived Without the Civil War?"(October 2011)
2010-2011 Stephanie Coontz, "Courting Trouble: The Past and Future of Marriage in America" (April 2011)
2009-2010 Clayton Laurie, "Accountability and the CIA" (March 2010)
2009-2010 Sam Walker, "The Great Presidential Speeches They Did Not Give: Presidents and Civil Liberties, Wilson to Bush" (October 2009)
2008-2009 Alan E. Steinweis, "The Kristallnacht Pogrom in Germany, November 1938: Myths and Realities" (November 2008)
2007-2008 Floyd Abrams, "History, Journalists, and the Law in the New Century" (April 2008)
2005-2006 Thomas Borstelmann, "The Changing Face of America's Enemies" (September 2005)
2004-2005 Marcus Rediker, "Villains of All Nations" (September 2004)
2003-2004 Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, "Well Behaved Women Seldom Make History" (September 2003)
2002-2003 Alan Bernstein, "The Formation of Hell in Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages" (October 2002)
2001-2002 Eugene N. Borza, "Alexander the Great in Our Time" (February 2002)
1999-2000 Eric Monkkonen, "American Murders: Patterns of Two Centuries"
1998-1999 Joyce Appleby, "Completing the Revolution, The First Generation of Americans"
1997-1998 Dane Kennedy, "Sir Richard Francis Burton and the Uses of Orientalism"
1996-1997 Thomas Neville Bonner, "The Academy Then and Now: A Personal Odyssey" (October 1997)