History
May
Thursday May 30 2:00-4:00
Remembering 1964: The 60th Anniversary Edition
Was 1964 the beginning of a new American age? Politically, it was the zenith of 20th Century liberalism represented by the JFK-LBJ presidencies and the rise of a conservatism defined by Goldwater and Reagan. Culturally, it may have been revolutionary, and it was televised. It was recorded and replayed over and over. Environmentally, it was in the middle of the Great Acceleration and the demands of better living through chemistry. Baby Boomers were in the middle of all of it. The world of 1964 was one that they inherited and one that they were changing into their own. Kent Germany, a historian of the 1960s at the University of South Carolina, will turn back the clock 60 years to see what lessons 1964 has for us today. And he will turn on some of that year’s recordings to hear those historical messages in real-time.
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Location: CLE Lecture Hall
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Presenter: : Kent Germany is Professor of History at the University of South Carolina and teaches in the African American Studies Program. He was previously on the faculty of the University of Virginia’s Miller Center of Public Affairs, where he led the LBJ project, co-founded the award-winning website www.whitehousetapes.org, and served as a host of For The Record, a nationally distributed PBS interview program on politics and history. At South Carolina, his teaching and research have focused on a wide range of topics including the civil rights movement, presidential politics, recent U.S. history, African American history, and oral and documentary history. The author of New Orleans After the Promises and numerous scholarly articles, he is also the editor or co-editor of seven books about the once-secret presidential recordings of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. He has appeared on radio and television programs, and documentary films, including CBS Evening News, AmericanHistoryTV, C-SPAN TV and C-SPAN Radio, MSNBC, PBS Frontline, the Wall Street Journal, and U.S. News and World Report.
Friday May 31 10:00-12:00
The Private Lives of American Presidents
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Many of us grew up in the era of Presidents Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon and Lyndon Johnson, but we knew very little about their private lives or those of other former presidents. Researching the private lives of the forty-six American presidents provides a remarkable insight into many of their love affairs, amorous entanglements with young women (and the resulting off-spring and related complications), as well as a rich trove of salacious love letters between them and their inamorata, preserved in the archives of the Library of Congress. The presentation will address the romantic affairs of such former Presidents as Jefferson, Cleveland, Harding, Roosevelt, Kennedy, Johnson, Clinton and several others. And then there are the First Ladies, a precious few of whom conducted themselves in a similar fashion to their presidential spouses. Caution: Be advised that this lecture is not for the faint of heart. These people were human, and their behavior runs the gamut from sharing a bed to hush money paid out by a major political party’s national committee - does that sound familiar? We hope you will be with us for this journey into the distant and not so distant past of life in the White House.
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Location: CLE Lecture Hall
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Presenter: Dr. Joe Trachtenberg earned his Ph.D. in political science from Emory University. Until his retirement in 2012, he was a political science professor and Political Science Program Coordinator at Clayton State University. The Dr. Joe Trachtenberg Political Science Award is given each year to the outstanding graduating senior. Dr. Trachtenberg has extensive experience as a public policy and political campaign consultant, serving as Chief Grants Officer in the Atlanta Mayor’s Office and later the Fulton County Manager’s Office. He has also been a senior policy consultant in four Atlanta mayoral campaigns and numerous other congressional and state political campaigns. His lifelong interests and research are American history and politics. He and his wife, Wendy Silver, reside in Atlanta, Georgia.
Friday May 31 2:00-4:00
Creating Moments in Time: The Many Faces of Tim Barnwell (LOCAL HISTORY)
For over forty years, photographer Tim has roamed the mountains of Southern Appalachia photographing and interviewing its fascinating people and the places where they live. Join him for a fun and entertaining presentation about his work, including the five years spent on the Faces and Places of Cashiers Valley book, produced by the Cashiers Historical Society (just in time for the new edition, which will be released this year!). He’ll also share work from other projects, including his three Appalachian-themed books, the people of Highlands, and his YouTube channel, The Face of Appalachia.
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Location: CLE Lecture Hall
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Presenter: Tim Barnwell is a master photographer and author based in Asheville, NC, and is one of the most published photographers in the South. Throughout his 35 year career he has been a photographer to dozens of books and is the author of eight of his own, including Faces and Places of Cashiers Valley (Cashiers Historical Society, 2019). His images have appeared in dozens of magazines, among them Time, Newsweek, Billboard, U.S. News and World Report, Smithsonian, and Our State, and his fine art photography images are in the permanent collections of The Met, NOMA, High Museum of Art, and the Bank of America corporate collection, among others.
June
Monday June 3 2:00-4:00
US Strategy in the Western Pacific, 1890 to present
Historically, US strategy abroad has prioritized Europe, but the Pacific and East Asia have always played a part, especially from the late 19th century forward. With the end of the Cold War and the rise of China in this century, East Asia and the Pacific have come to the forefront, but not without a balancing of priorities with Europe and the Middle East. That balancing has become all the more difficult due to political polarization in the United States. The best hope for the future rests in the ability of the traditional mainstreams of the Republican and Democratic parties to come together on a global strategy as they did under FDR, Truman, and Eisenhower that balances the complex interests of the United States in Europe, the Middle East, and East Asia with an increasing focus on the latter. Given the severity of China’s challenge to US interests, the failure to achieve consensus on a strategy and its execution could have fatal consequences.
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Location: CLE Lecture Hall
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Presenter: Bill Stueck is Professor of History Emeritus at the University of Georgia where he taught for over 30 years, retiring in 2012 as Distinguished Research Professor of History. He is the single author of five books, editor or coeditor of three more, and of dozens of articles and book chapters. His research and writing focuses on US relations with East Asia from 1945 to the end of the Cold War and beyond. During 1995 he taught as a Senior Fulbright Scholar at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies in Seoul. His book, The Korean War: An International History, was described in the Times Literary Supplement as “the best single volume we have on the Korean War.” He received his PhD in History from Brown University in 1977
Wednesday June 5 2:00-4:00
VIETNAM - One Man's Perspective
As a young, non-commissioned officer, then 19-year old US Army Sergeant Larry Saul served a combat tour in Vietnam in 1970. Fifty years later he returned to Vietnam to explore the beautiful country and see how the fascinating people had evolved since the end of the war. He has made two subsequent trips since. This lecture will look at the history, culture and geography of Vietnam from the late 19th century up to 1975. Beginning with the Big Picture, he will use the mission of his unit and their experiences to present a snapshot of the US involvement...then, fast forward to late 2018 and how Vietnam has progressed.
Location: CLE Lecture Hall
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Presenter: COL (Retired) Lawrence Saul served more than 34 years in the US Army in a variety of positions around the world, including three tours with the British Army, two additional tours in Europe, twice in Alaska and elsewhere in the USA. In his final assignment he was the Senior US Army Liaison Officer to the British Army. He was one of the last 10 Vietnam War veterans still serving when he retired in 2008. Since retiring, he has worked as a consultant to the British Army in the field of Knowledge Management and helped with the reorganization of the Armed Forces of the nations of Azerbaijan, Bulgaria and Romania. He was a Senior Lecturer at the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey California and then Vice President at the Army and Navy Academy in Carlsbad, California. He lectures regularly on Military History at various universities and leads historical tours to WW I and II European battlefields, focusing on D-Day and the battles that followed.
Thursday June 6 10:00-12:00
Modern War
Warfare has evolved significantly since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union. There has been a significant shift from large, national armies to non-state groups, terrorist groups, private military companies, and lone wolf actors. The huge impact of technology on weapons development, design and use continues to change today’s modern warfare. Additionally, the nature of war has also changed. Today, outer space is a battleground, as is the internet and cyber space. This course will explore the evolution in warfare and how the battlefield could be in some far-off distant land, in your neighborhood, or in your laptop.
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Location: CLE Lecture Hall
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Presenter: COL (Retired) Lawrence Saul served more than 34 years in the US Army in a variety of positions around the world, including three tours with the British Army, two additional tours in Europe, twice in Alaska and elsewhere in the USA. In his final assignment he was the Senior US Army Liaison Officer to the British Army. He was one of the last 10 Vietnam War veterans still serving when he retired in 2008. Since retiring, he has worked as a consultant to the British Army in the field of Knowledge Management and helped with the reorganization of the Armed Forces of the nations of Azerbaijan, Bulgaria and Romania. He was a Senior Lecturer at the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey California and then Vice President at the Army and Navy Academy in Carlsbad, California. He lectures regularly on Military History at various universities and leads historical tours to WW I and II European battlefields, focusing on D-Day and the battles that followed.
Tuesday June 18 10:00-12:00
Impeachment: Lessons from Watergate to the Present
This program is sponsored by Al and Martha Pearson
Fifty years ago this summer, the unfolding saga of the Watergate scandal dominated newspaper headlines, culminating in President Richard Nixon’s resignation on August 8, 1974. In this lecture, award-winning political historian Joseph Crespino recounts the history of Watergate and places it in the longer history of presidential impeachments. He will also address the emergence of impeachment as a political strategy in contemporary national politics.
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Location: CLE Lecture Hall
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Presenter: Joseph Crespino is the Jimmy Carter Professor of History at Emory University. He is an expert in the political and cultural history of the twentieth century United States and of the history of the American South since Reconstruction. Crespino has published three books, the most recent of which is Atticus Finch: The Biography—Harper Lee, Her Father, and the Making of an American Icon published in 2018. He is currently writing the chapters covering United States history in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries for the textbook America: A Narrative History. He received a BA from Northwestern University and a PhD from Stanford University.
Monday June 24 2:00-4:00
One Continuous Grave: How Infectious Disease Remade the American Revolution
This program is sponsored by Jim and Jo Ann Kiley
One of the least studied aspects of the American Revolution is how it was influenced by smallpox, dysentery, typhus, yellow fever, malaria, and other epidemics diseases. American invaders might have succeeded in bringing two additional British colonies into the United States had they not been stopped in their tracks by smallpox and malaria. But epidemics by no means suppressed humans’ free will. The Continental Army shrank during the winter of 1776-1777, when it most needed to expand because Continental soldiers refused to reenlist, and other young men declined to sign up, until the army took better care of the troops’ health. In February 1777, George Washington got the message, inoculating the Continental Army against smallpox, saving thousands of soldiers’ lives and reopening the recruitment valve. Disease was a story about women as well as men. Women succumbed to infectious diseases spread by the war and battled disease as army nurses and even as laundresses required to wash shirts infested with lice and the deadly typhus virus.
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Location: CLE Lecture Hall
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Presenter: Woody Holton is the Peter and Bonnie McCausland Professor of History at the University of South Carolina where he teaches and researches Early American history, especially the American Revolution, with a focus on economic history and on African Americans, Native Americans, and women. He is the author of several books, including Abigail Adams, which was awarded the Bancroft Prize, considered to be among the most prestigious awards in the field of American History writing. His second book, Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution, was a finalist for the National Book Award.
Tuesday June 25 10:00-12:00
Myth-Understood America: The Most Entrenched Myths about Columbus, the Puritans, Slavery, the Declaration of Independence, and Other Crucial Topics of U.S. History
This program is sponsored by Jim and Jo Ann Kiley
It can be astonishing to step back and notice just how much of what Americans think they know about their history turns out not to be true. Columbus’s contemporaries didn’t disagree with him about whether the earth is round, just about how wide it is. And had he realized that he was wrong and they were right, he might never have sailed west into the Atlantic. Puritans were not puritan in the modern sense; by the time of the American Revolution, a third of New England couples were pregnant on their wedding day. The Continental Congress intended the Declaration of Independence as an ordinance of secession; it would take decades of activism on the part of anti-slavery and pro-women’s rights activists to transform the Declaration into the freedom document we revere today. Of course, one person’s myth is another person’s established fact, so this course will be as much a discussion as it is an illustrated lecture. We will not only debate individual myths but discuss the functions myths serve in society and how America’s mythology compares to its counterparts overseas.
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Location: CLE Lecture Hall
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Presenter: Woody Holton is the Peter and Bonnie McCausland Professor of History at the University of South Carolina where he teaches and researches Early American history, especially the American Revolution, with a focus on economic history and on African Americans, Native Americans, and women. He is the author of several books, including Abigail Adams, which was awarded the Bancroft Prize, considered to be among the most prestigious awards in the field of American History writing. His second book, Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution, was a finalist for the National Book Award.
July
Monday July 1 2:00-4:00
"Barbary Pirates": Politics, Faith, and Violence on the Mediterranean
This program is sponsored by Hugh and Connie Fitzpatrick
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Americans have always had a fascination with what we are told was our first foreign war, the action against the “Barbary Pirates.” We all know “From the Halls of Montezuma, to the Shores of Tripoli,” but just who were we fighting? This presentation will place these people in the long history of seaborne violence on the Mediterranean Sea. We’ll explore how politics and religion made theft, murder, and enslavement on fast ships an act of statecraft, and learn who benefitted from the continued existence of the Corsairs for over three centuries. We may even question whether they were pirates at all.
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Location: CLE Lecture Hall
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Presenter: Max Owre is the Executive Director of Carolina Public Humanities. A graduate of the University of Vermont, he obtained his PhD in modern European history from UNCCH in 2008. Max is a lecturer in the History Department, teaching courses in European, world and colonial history since 2007. Max is a principal organizer, and frequent host and moderator of CPH Events. He also lectures frequently for CPH on various topics in French and European history
Tuesday July 2 10:00-12:00
The French Foreign Legion and its Colonial Legacy
This program is sponsored by Hugh and Connie Fitzpatrick
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Most Americans know about the French Foreign Legion through films like Beau Geste, or the antics of Abbott and Costello in the Foreign Legion. This famed fighting organization, however, has a grittier and less romantic history tied to France’s brutal colonial conquests in Africa, Asia, and elsewhere. This presentation will review the history of the FFL from its origins as a dumping ground for foreign “undesirables,” to its continued role today as an element of France’s influence throughout the world. Participants will learn about some of its noted engagements and its complicity in some of the ugliest episodes of France’s imperial history.
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Location: CLE Lecture Hall
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Presenter: Max Owre is the Executive Director of Carolina Public Humanities. A graduate of the University of Vermont, he obtained his PhD in modern European history from UNCCH in 2008. Max is a lecturer in the History Department, teaching courses in European, world and colonial history since 2007. Max is a principal organizer, and frequent host and moderator of CPH Events. He also lectures frequently for CPH on various topics in French and European history
Wednesday July 10 2:00-4:00
Clementine Spencer-Churchill
This program is sponsored by Harriet and John Pope
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Winston Churchill famously said, “My most brilliant achievement was my ability to be able to persuade my wife to marry me.” This program will explore the extraordinary relationship between the British statesman and his wife, Clementine Spencer-Churchill. Their 56-year marriage shaped the course of history. Discover their extraordinary partnership—complete with triumphs and challenges— through letters, photographs, and seldom told stories about Churchill’s “better half,” Clementine.
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Location: CLE Lecture Hall
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Presenter: Tim Riley is the Director and Chief Curator for The Winston Churchill Museum at Westminster College. Tim is a graduate, cum laude, of Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin and also studied at Columbia University in the City of New York. He has served as a curatorial assistant, education assistant and lectures/concerts coordinator at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. From 2006 through 2012 Tim served as director of The Trout Museum of Art in Appleton, and was appointed Director Emeritus in 2012. In April of 2023 Tim was installed as Churchill Fellow of Westminster College.
Thursday July 11 10:00-12:00
Churchill and the Middle East
This program is sponsored by Harriet and John Pope
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Winston Churchill’s involvement with the affairs of the Middle East were enduring and deep. From his leadership as Colonial Secretary at the post-World War I Cairo Conference in 1921 to his steadfast and lifelong support for Zionism, this program will examine Churchill’s engagement in what he called “the hardest hearted areas in the world.” In this illustrated and dynamic talk you will discover how some of the decisions Churchill made about the region continue to impact the world today.
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Location: CLE Lecture Hall
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Presenter: Tim Riley is the Director and Chief Curator for The Winston Churchill Museum at Westminster College. Tim is a graduate, cum laude, of Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin and also studied at Columbia University in the City of New York. He has served as a curatorial assistant, education assistant and lectures/concerts coordinator at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. From 2006 through 2012 Tim served as director of The Trout Museum of Art in Appleton, and was appointed Director Emeritus in 2012. In April of 2023 Tim was installed as Churchill Fellow of Westminster College.
Monday July 15 2:00-4:00
History of Hamas
This program is sponsored by Ed Mawyer
Immediately after the horrific terrorist attacks of October 7, 2023, some commentators began comparing Hamas to ISIS, a political organization responsible for some of the most grisly acts of terrorism recorded this century. As Professor Tasar will explain, this comparison is misleading. Hamas owes its origins to Islamic traditions having little in common with ISIS. It has roots tracing back to 1978, when Israeli military authorities hoped to weaken the secular PLO by encouraging the creation of the Islamic University of Gaza. More than just names and dates, this presentation will take a bird’s eye view of Marxist guerrilla movements in the Third World, especially their frequent use of graphic terrorism to get publicity. It will then highlight the successful efforts by the Ayatollah Khomeini to “Islamize” these national liberation movements in the Middle East in the 1980s. Hamas was founded in 1989 as a “religious” partner in the PLO’s struggle against Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. As it has evolved, Hamas represents a confluence of an older Marxist guerrilla tradition that relies on terrorism against civilians, and a newer, Iranian-inspired model of militiabased mobilization that embraces Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthi movement in Yemen. The presentation will conclude by explaining the circumstances leading to Hamas’ takeover of Gaza in February 2007 and why the October 7 invasion was such a surprise, not just militarily, but ideologically as well.
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Location: CLE Lecture Hall
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Presenter: Boston native Eren Tasar has taught in the History Department at UNC since 2013. His interests are the religious and social history of Soviet Central Asia. Tasar’s first book, Soviet and Muslim, examined Soviet policies toward Islamic institutions. He is currently writing a 24 lecture video series about the history of Central Asia since ancient times for The Great Courses. He is also working on a second book project dealing with atheistic literature written in languages spoken by Muslims in the USSR.
Tuesday July 16 10:00-12:00
Challenges to Western Dominance
This program is sponsored by Ed Mawyer
The landscape of global power is evolving, and Western countries must navigate these changes to maintain influence and address common global challenges. This presentation will survey the tectonic shifts confronting the Western-dominated world order emergent after World War II reaching virtually unchallenged dominance in the 1980s. Today, the global economic balance is shifting. The challenge to traditional Western economic dominance is reflected in the rise of new economic powerhouses altering the dynamics of international trade and finance. The world is moving towards a more multipolar political and economic system with the rise of regional powers resisting Western hegemony. Countries like Russia, India, and Brazil along with important regional powers are playing increasingly significant roles in global affairs, creating a more diverse and decentralized international order. The effectiveness of existing global institutions is aggressively being questioned with emerging powers advocating reforms which in their view would more fairly reflect the distribution of power. This movement challenges Western-dominated institutions and their ability to set the global agenda. Professor Tasar will elaborate on the ramifications of this important phenomenon.
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Location: CLE Lecture Hall
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Presenter: Boston native Eren Tasar has taught in the History Department at UNC since 2013. His interests are the religious and social history of Soviet Central Asia. Tasar’s first book, Soviet and Muslim, examined Soviet policies toward Islamic institutions. He is currently writing a 24 lecture video series about the history of Central Asia since ancient times for The Great Courses. He is also working on a second book project dealing with atheistic literature written in languages spoken by Muslims in the USSR.
August
Tuesday August 6 10:00-12:00
The American Presidency: Executive Orders From George Washington to Joe Biden
This program is sponsored by Terry Adamson & Ede Holiday
Most Americans don’t realize that the U.S. Constitution doesn’t include a provision that explicitly allows the use of executive orders. Yet, Presidential executive orders have changed the course of our nation’s history in epic ways since George Washington issued the first one in 1789. Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, Theodore Roosevelt’s Grand Canyon preservation, Harry Truman’s Desegregation of the U.S. military, John F. Kennedy’s Peace Corps creation, and Gerald Ford’s pardoning of Richard Nixon all were the result of an executive order. Ever since the Supreme Court overturned five of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s executive orders in 1935 a fierce debate has ensued over precisely the degree of power U.S. Presidents are afforded under our constitution.
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Location: CLE Lecture Hall
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Presenter: Douglas Brinkley is Professor of History at Rice University, a CNN Presidential Historian, and award winning author of numerous books of American History. He has written biographies of Dean Acheson, James Forrestal, Jimmy Carter, Henry Ford, Rosa Parks and Walter Cronkite, among others. He was personally selected by Nancy Reagan to edit President Ronald Reagan’s presidential diaries. The New-York Historical Society selected Brinkley in 2017 as it’s official U.S. Presidential Historian. Brinkley has been actively involved in the environmental, conservation, and historic preservation community. Many of his books address political leadership and environmental concerns, including: The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America; The Quiet World: Saving Alaska’s Wilderness Kingdom, 1879-1960; Rightful Heritage: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Land of America; and most recently, in 2022, Silent Spring Revolution: John F. Kennedy, Rachel Carson, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, and the Great Environmental Awakening. His interest in conservation and environmental preservation has led to board or leadership advisory roles in support of the American Museum of Natural History, Yellowstone Park Foundation, National Audubon Society and the Rockefeller-Roosevelt Conservation Roundtable. He has edited books about Jack Kerouac and Hunter Thompson, as well as two volumes of The Nixon Tapes: 1971-72 and 1973. Brinkley is also passionate about Jazz, receiving a Grammy Award in 2017 as co-producer of Presidential Suite: Eight Variations on Freedom (Best Jazz Ensemble). He has been on the Board of Trustees at Brevard College and the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library. He is a member of the Century Association, Council of Foreign Relations and James Madison Council of the Library of Congress. He received his M.A and PhD from Georgetown University.
Wednesday August 7 10:00-12:00
U.S. Conservation Leadership: Theodore Roosevelt to Jimmy Carter
This program is sponsored by Terry Adamson & Ede Holiday
Ever since Theodore Roosevelt saved 234 million acres of wild America from 1901 to 1909, Presidents get judged by their conservation record. This lecture will examine the backstory of how such scenic landscapes as the Great Smoky Mountains, Joshua Tree, the Everglades, Big Bend and Sequoia were saved for posterity. How FDR used the New Deal’s Civilian Conservation Corps to plant one billion trees and establish 800 state parks will be explained. Special attention will also be given to how President Jimmy Carter protected 104 million acres of pristine Alaska in 1980 (inspired in part by the photography of Ansel Adams and his time fishing in North Georgia Mountain streams).
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Location: CLE Lecture Hall
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Presenter: Douglas Brinkley is Professor of History at Rice University, a CNN Presidential Historian, and award winning author of numerous books of American History. He has written biographies of Dean Acheson, James Forrestal, Jimmy Carter, Henry Ford, Rosa Parks and Walter Cronkite, among others. He was personally selected by Nancy Reagan to edit President Ronald Reagan’s presidential diaries. The New-York Historical Society selected Brinkley in 2017 as it’s official U.S. Presidential Historian. Brinkley has been actively involved in the environmental, conservation, and historic preservation community. Many of his books address political leadership and environmental concerns, including: The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America; The Quiet World: Saving Alaska’s Wilderness Kingdom, 1879-1960; Rightful Heritage: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Land of America; and most recently, in 2022, Silent Spring Revolution: John F. Kennedy, Rachel Carson, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, and the Great Environmental Awakening. His interest in conservation and environmental preservation has led to board or leadership advisory roles in support of the American Museum of Natural History, Yellowstone Park Foundation, National Audubon Society and the Rockefeller-Roosevelt Conservation Roundtable. He has edited books about Jack Kerouac and Hunter Thompson, as well as two volumes of The Nixon Tapes: 1971-72 and 1973. Brinkley is also passionate about Jazz, receiving a Grammy Award in 2017 as co-producer of Presidential Suite: Eight Variations on Freedom (Best Jazz Ensemble). He has been on the Board of Trustees at Brevard College and the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library. He is a member of the Century Association, Council of Foreign Relations and James Madison Council of the Library of Congress. He received his M.A and PhD from Georgetown University.
Thursday August 8 10:00-12:00
Kicks: A History of Route 66
This program is sponsored by Terry Adamson & Ede Holiday
When Route 66 opened in 1926 it was the United States’s first paved highway from Chicago to Los Angeles. To this day Route 66 still captures the imagination of scores of motorists, a two-lane road of dreams realized and dreams abandoned. Figures associated with “America’s Main Street” – Al Capone, Will Rogers, Maya Angelou, John Steinbeck, Woody Guthrie, Nat King Cole, Rudolfo Anaya, Bob Dylan, Chuck Berry, Andy Warhol, Georgia O’Keefe, and Dolores Huerta – will be featured in the lecture. Route 66, in the end, is where the Americana culture of today – neon signs, barbeque, McDonalds, Dairy Queen, RVs, motels and Corvettes – were first popularized.
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Location: CLE Lecture Hall
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Presenter: Douglas Brinkley is Professor of History at Rice University, a CNN Presidential Historian, and award winning author of numerous books of American History. He has written biographies of Dean Acheson, James Forrestal, Jimmy Carter, Henry Ford, Rosa Parks and Walter Cronkite, among others. He was personally selected by Nancy Reagan to edit President Ronald Reagan’s presidential diaries. The New-York Historical Society selected Brinkley in 2017 as it’s official U.S. Presidential Historian. Brinkley has been actively involved in the environmental, conservation, and historic preservation community. Many of his books address political leadership and environmental concerns, including: The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America; The Quiet World: Saving Alaska’s Wilderness Kingdom, 1879-1960; Rightful Heritage: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Land of America; and most recently, in 2022, Silent Spring Revolution: John F. Kennedy, Rachel Carson, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, and the Great Environmental Awakening. His interest in conservation and environmental preservation has led to board or leadership advisory roles in support of the American Museum of Natural History, Yellowstone Park Foundation, National Audubon Society and the Rockefeller-Roosevelt Conservation Roundtable. He has edited books about Jack Kerouac and Hunter Thompson, as well as two volumes of The Nixon Tapes: 1971-72 and 1973. Brinkley is also passionate about Jazz, receiving a Grammy Award in 2017 as co-producer of Presidential Suite: Eight Variations on Freedom (Best Jazz Ensemble). He has been on the Board of Trustees at Brevard College and the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library. He is a member of the Century Association, Council of Foreign Relations and James Madison Council of the Library of Congress. He received his M.A and PhD from Georgetown University.
Thursday August 15 2:00-4:00
George C. Marshall and Robert E. Lee
This program is sponsored by Lee and Chesley Garrett
This presentation examines two central figures in US history: General Robert E. Lee and General of the Army George C. Marshall, the “Architect of Victory” in WW2 and, arguably, the “Architect of Peace” in the immediate aftermath of the War. General Marshall graduated from the Virginia Military Institute in 1901 and no doubt studied General Lee’s military accomplishments and reputation. Even though Lee, a graduate of West Point, resigned his Commission in the US Army and led the Army of Northern Virginia during the Civil War, General Marshall admired and respected Lee. Rob Havers looks at the two men and compares their reputations today.
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Location: CLE Lecture Hall
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Presenter: Rob Havers is a British military historian. He currently serves as president of the American Civil War Museum in Richmond, Virginia. Rob previously served as president of the Pritzker Military Museum & Library, president of the George C. Marshall Foundation, and as a Senior Lecturer in War Studies at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. Havers also served as Executive Director of the National Churchill Museum and a visiting professor at Westminster College. Havers graduated from Queen Mary University of London with a bachelor’s degree in history and politics, London School of Economics and Political Science with a master’s degree in later modern British history, and Pembroke College, Cambridge with a Ph.D. in History
Friday August 16 10:00-12:00
War and Remembrance: How Wars Are Predicted and How Wars Are Remembered
This program is sponsored by Lee and Chesley Garrett
Rob Havers, a distinguished military historian, will discuss how “future” wars have been imagined through the years and how accurate these predictions turn out to be. With reference to the American Civil War and numerous other conflicts, the presentation examines what is remembered today about these same wars, years after the fighting has ended, and why.
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Location: CLE Lecture Hall
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Presenter: Rob Havers is a British military historian. He currently serves as president of the American Civil War Museum in Richmond, Virginia. Rob previously served as president of the Pritzker Military Museum & Library, president of the George C. Marshall Foundation, and as a Senior Lecturer in War Studies at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. Havers also served as Executive Director of the National Churchill Museum and a visiting professor at Westminster College. Havers graduated from Queen Mary University of London with a bachelor’s degree in history and politics, London School of Economics and Political Science with a master’s degree in later modern British history, and Pembroke College, Cambridge with a Ph.D. in History
Monday August 26 2:00-4:00
How "Modern" Was the Old South?
Southern slaveholders went to great lengths to portray themselves as custodians of a backward-looking, noble society, one that drew its strength from the past and fought against the recklessness of the modern future of free wage labor and democracy. In their architecture, literature, and in the institution of slavery itself, they fashioned themselves as feudal lords, heirs to a past they admired and cherished. Beneath this facade, however, was a modern, highly exploitative system of labor, one that gave rise to one of the most “progressive” societies in the world in the first half of the nineteenth century. This lecture explores how, beneath the gloss of genteel aristocracy, the Old South pioneered some of the most modern, even capitalistic innovations in the world.
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Location: CLE Lecture Hall
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Presenter: Mark Smith is a Historian of American History, Director of the Institute for Southern Studies, and a Carolina Distinguished Professor of History at the University of South Carolina. He is a scholar of environmental disasters, southern history, and of sensory history, which he described to an interviewer as stressing “the role of the senses” – including sight and vision – in shaping people’s experience in the past.
Tuesday August 22 10:00-12:00
America's First Civil War
Roughly twenty percent of American colonists were “Loyalists” during the American Revolution. Who were these people and why did they elect to remain loyal to the Mother Country? The risks they took were great but no greater than those taken by Americans who chose to rebel. What motivated those who wanted to leave the British Empire? What was at stake in their decision? This presentation outlines the motivations, risks, and possible rewards for both sides and frames the American Revolution as America’s first Civil War.
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Location: CLE Lecture Hall
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Presenter: Mark Smith is a Historian of American History, Director of the Institute for Southern Studies, and a Carolina Distinguished Professor of History at the University of South Carolina. He is a scholar of environmental disasters, southern history, and of sensory history, which he described to an interviewer as stressing “the role of the senses” – including sight and vision – in shaping people’s experience in the past.