College of Liberal Arts: SoHCS Presents the 2026 Erik C. Banks Memorial Lecture in Philosophy

Speaker: Dr. Sean Silver, Associate Professor of English and Director of Undergraduate Studies at Rutgers University.
Topic: "The Philosophy of Color & the American Revolution"
This public lecture by Dr. Sean Silver (Rutgers University) explores the unlikely origins of a modern theory of color in the work of Edward Bancroft. Bancroft is best known today as the Revolutionary-era spy who ensured the British had access to Benjamin Franklin’s letters. During his own lifetime, however, Bancroft was famous for a new philosophy of color, developed through experiments with North American botanicals. Bringing together a transatlantic war with the modernization of chemistry–and the felling of a forest with an appetite for bright, hardwearing yellows–Silver's lecture will trace how Bancroft arrived at an absolutely new idea: a theory of color compatible with modern elemental chemistry.