Jamestown Settlement’s Fall 2023 Director’s Series Guests Announced

WILLIAMSBURG — Jamestown Settlement’s popular Director’s Series continues this fall featuring three conversations with experts in their fields that will explore topics ranging from archaeology and preservation to culinary history and transracial adoption.

The Director’s Series, now in its second year, features Christy S. Coleman, executive director of the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation, as she sits down with prominent scholars and public figures for lively and enlightening dialog surrounding our shared legacies of American history.

Programs will take place at 7 p.m. on Sept. 20, Oct. 18 and Nov. 15 in Jamestown Settlement’s Robins Foundation Theater.

David M. Givens, Jamestown Rediscovery Foundation’s director of archaeology at Historic Jamestowne, will address climate challenges that Jamestown Island faces and his team’s efforts to preserve and protect this site, listed last year as one of America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. He is a Jamestown Society Fellowship recipient and author of several works on Jamestown history, including his most recent book “Angela: Jamestown and the First Africans.”

Michael W. Twitty, an African American and Jewish culinary historian and food writer, will share the recipe for how he connects his personal roots through food. Twitty is a blogger at Afroculinaria.com and author of award-winning books — including 2023 National Jewish Book Award recipient “KosherSoul” and 2018 James Beard Foundation Book of the Year “The Cooking Gene,” which traces his food ancestry from Africa to America and from slavery to freedom. He has appeared on numerous national television programs and holds roles as a National Geographic Explorer and 2022 TIME 100 Next class member.

Susan Devan Harness, a cultural anthropologist, member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai tribes and an American Indian transracial adoptee, will share her journey to understanding the complexities and struggles of being an American Indian child adopted by a White couple living in the rural American West. Having written and spoken to national and international audiences on American Indian transracial adoption reform, she is an award-winning author of “Bitterroot: A Salish Memoir of Transracial Adoption” and recently published her cultural anthropology research “Mixing Cultural Identities Through Transracial Adoption.”

Guests can reserve their live in-person or virtual seats for $10 per program. Admission is limited and tickets must be purchased in advance online at jyfmuseums.org/directorsseries.