Professor Henry Wells Lawrence chaired the history department from 1920 to 1942, and the Lawrence lectures were established in his memory. A department document described Professor Lawrence as “the embodiment of an ideal, the ideal of the liberal free mind, the mind independent and courageous.” The foundation charter of the lectures provides for a lecture by “a scholar in the broad field of history who will present his (or hers) subject in the spirit of the liberal tradition to which Dr. Lawrence was devoted.” The series began in 1960.

2018

Beshara Doumani, Professor of History and Director of Middle East Studies at Brown University, "Between House and Orchard: The Ecologies of Gender and Property in the Ottoman Mediterranean."

2017

Ousseina Alidou, Professor at Rutgers The State University of New Jersey-New Brunswick, "African Muslim Women's Social Movements, Islam, Agency, and Social Change"

2016

Joan Wallach Scott, Harold F. Linder Professor in the School of Social Science, Institute for Advanced Study, "Affect, Civility and Academic Freedom"

2015

Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, Mary Frances Berry Collegiate Professor Emerita of History, American Culture, and Women’s Studies, University of Michigan, "Thomas Branagan & the Whitening of American Democracy"

2011

Michael A. Gomez, Professor of History, Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at New York University, "Rightly Dividing the America-Africa Nexus: Challenges Facing a Challenged Scholarship"

2005

Genna Rae McNeil, Professor of History, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, "Women in Protest After Brown"

2001

Valerie Hansen, Professor of History, Yale University, "The World’s Leading Society in 1450"

2000

Ivo Banac, Professor of History, Yale University, "The Balkans as a Mirror of Europe"

1999

James Green, Professor of History, California State University, Long Beach, "Unraveling Myths and Unpacking Lies: A Voyage Through Twentieth-Century Brazil"

1998

Toyin Falola, Professor of History, University of Texas at Austin, "Africa and the Western Academy"

1996

Howard Lamar, Sterling Professor of History, Yale University, "Coming Into Its Own: Western Art in the 20th Century"

1994

Thomas R. H. Havens, University of California, Berkeley, "Censorship and Self-Censorship in Japan"

1990

F. Edward Cranz, Connecticut College, "Education in America: Problems and Paradoxes"

1989

Michael R. Marrus, University of Toronto, "The Vatican and the Holocaust"

1988

Peter Duus, Stanford University, "Uncle Sam Goes East: The Image of America in Japanese Political Cartoons"

1987

William J. Cronon, Yale University, "Placing the Plot: Narrating Environmental Change”

1986

Natalie Zemon Davis, Princeton University, "From Alms to Bribes: The Gift in Sixteenth-Century France"

1985

Walter LaFeber, Cornell University, "Reagan Foreign Policy and Central America: A Historian's Perspective"

1984

Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, University of Pennsylvania, "The Body Politic: Sexual Symbolism in American Politics, 1860-1930"

1983

Charles Tilley, University of Michigan, "Origins of the Contemporary Collective-Action Repertoire"

1982

A. L. Basham, The Australian National University, "Hartley House Calcutta: The First Novel about India"

1981

John Higham, The Johns Hopkins University, "The Rise and Fall of Americanism"

1980

Franklin L. Ford, Harvard University, "From Tyrannicide to Terrorism: The Eclipse of a Classical Ideal"

1979

Philip A. Kuhn, Harvard University, "History and Politics in China"

1978

William G. McLoughlin, Brown University, "Cherokee Bi-Culturalism, 1776-1876"

1977

William H. McNeill, University of Chicago, "Disease in History"

1976

Frederick W. Mote, Princeton University, "Recent Communist Interpretations of the Chinese Past: History as Confucianism versus Legalism"

1975

Jack P. Greene, The Johns Hopkins University, "The Origins of the American Revolution: An Explanation"

1974

Robin W. Winks, Yale University, "Comparing Frontiers: An Exercise in Comparative History"

1973

John M. Blum, Yale University, "American Politics and the Culture of War, 1941-1945"

1972

Ainslee T. Embree, Columbia University, "India: The Possibilities of Pluralism"

1971

Robert R. Palmer, Yale University, "The Century of American College, 1870-1970"

1970

Cecilia Kenyon, Smith College, "Consensus and Morality in a Free Society: Thomas Jefferson"

1969

Arthur F. Wright, Yale University, "Autocracy and Personality: The T'ai-tsung Emperor of the T'ang"

1968

Jerome Blum, Princeton University, "American Slavery and European Serfdom: A Comparison"

1967

Edmund S. Morgan, Yale University, "The First Chapter of American History"

1966

David Owen, Harvard University, "Victorian London: The Ungoverned Metropolis"

1965

Mary C. Wright, Yale University, "Revolution in China"

1964

Carl Bridenbaugh, Brown University, "Our Ancestors the People of England, 1590-1640"

1963

Cyril E. Black, Princeton University, "Russian Interpretations of World History"

1962

Alan Barth, Washington, D.C., "Order and Liberty"

1961

Hannah Arendt, Chicago Illinois, "Freedom and Revolution" (combined with Sykes Lecture, Fiftieth Anniversary Celebration of Connecticut College, September 21, 1961)

1960

Gordon A. Craig, Princeton University, "The Role of Diplomacy in East-West Struggle"