Events and Lectures
The Department of History hosts a number of speakers and events throughout the year. More information can be found on the menu selections on the left. What follows is a partial list of Department events for the spring semester 2013.ALEXANDRIAN SOCIETY'S SPRING SYMPOSIUM, "Comparative Emancipation in the Atlantic World." Monday, March 11th, 2 - 5:30 PM. Featuring Dr. Thavolia Glymph (Duke University), Dr. Dale Graden (University of Idaho), and Dr. Antonio Espinoza. For more information about the symposium or the Alexandrian Society, please contact Nicholas Betts at bettsna@vcu.edu.
20th annual WILLIAM E. and MIRIAM S. BLAKE LECTURE in the History of Christianity. "Redefining the Sacred: Protestantism and the Birth of Modernity"
Featured speaker is Carlos M. N. Eire, Ph.D., T. Lawrason Riggs Professor of History and Religious Studies at Yale University.
Thursday, February 21, 2013, 7:30 PM, Monroe Park Campus, VCU Student Commons Theater, 907 Floyd Avenue, 1st floor. A reception will follow in the James River Terrace.
The lecture is free and open to the public; for additional information contact Dr. Andrew Crislip at 804-828-0155 or acrislip@vcu.edu.
The Blake lecture honors William E. and Miriam S. Blake and is presented annually by a renowned scholar. The lecture is supported by an endowed fund established by family, friends, colleagues, and those who enjoyed the History of Christianity course which Professor Blake initiated at VCU.
Our speaker this year, Dr. Carlos Eire, was one of the 14,000 children airlifted out of Cuba in 1962 during the CIA's "Operation Peter Pan" - exiled from his family, his country, and his own childhood by the revolution. Seventeen years later, in 1979, Carlos Eire received his Ph.D. from Yale University. He specializes in the social, intellectual, religious, and cultural history of late medieval and early modern Europe, with a strong focus on both the Protestant and Catholic Reformations; the history of popular piety; and the history of death.
A past president of the Society for Reformation Research, Eire is currently on the editorial board of the journal "Curch History" and the publications committee of Yale University Press. He is now writing a survey history of the Reformation era and researching attitudes toward miracles in the sexteenth and seventeenth centuries. His courses range widely in subject, but tend to focus on early modern Europe and on religious history.
VCU SOUTHERN FILM FESTIVAL Click here for flier.
February 8th and 9th, 2013
Details at http://wp.vcu.edu/sff
Feature films:
Jamestown (1923) silent film, live musical accompaniment
Friday, 2.8.13. VMFA, 6:30-9PM
free for VCU affiliates, $5 VMFA members, $8 general admission
Thunder Road (1959)
Saturday, 2.9.13. Cous Cous Restaurant, 10AM
$5 (includes breakfast)
The Making of Lincoln (2012)
Saturday, 2.9.13. Virginia Historical Society, 1PM, free
The Loving Story (2011)
Saturday, 2.9.13. Grace Street Theater, 4PM, free
Stormy Weather (1943)
Saturday, 2.9.13. Grace Street Theater, 7PM, free
YEAR OF FREEDOM LECTURES
Details at http://www.yearoffreedom.vcu.edu/
These lectures are free and open to the public.
Spring 2013 Lunchtime Brown-Bag Discussions.
All lectures start at Noon. Feel free to bring your lunch.
Questions: Ryan K. Smith (rksmith3@vcu.edu)
Wednesday, 23 January 2013.
John Kneebone, "A Breakdown on the Underground Railroad: Petersburg, 1858."
Student Commons, Forum Room.
Wednesday, 6 February 2013.
John Coski, "The Confederate Battle Flag: A Short History of a Controversial Symbol."
Larrick Center, Court End A.
Wednesday, 20 February 2013.
Kathy Bassard, "Negotiating Freedom: Emancipation and Identity in Slave Narratives and Neo-slave Narratives."
Student Commons, Virginia Room A.
Wednesday, 27 March 2013.
Andrew Talkov, "Something Like Glory: The True History of Black Soldiers in the Civil War."
Student Commons, Forum Room.
Wednesday, 10 April 2013.
Liz Canfield, "The Prison-Industrial Complex and Contemporary Abolition Movements."
VCU Commons Theater.
Wednesday, 24 April 2013.
VCU Year of Freedom Committee, Students, and Audience
Recap: What then? What next?
Open discussion of the "Year of Freedom"
Student Commons, Forum Room.
Fall 2012 Events/Lectures
Monday, 17 September 2012
Monroe Park Campus, Student Commons Theater, 1:20 PM
Watch Party! live streamed event is part of the VCU Year of Freedom program and is open to the public at no charge.
On 17 September 1862, Union and Confederate troops fought the first major battle of the Civil War on Northern soil, at Antietam Creek, near Sharpsburg, Maryland. The bloody day ended with almost 23,000 men dead or wounded but the Confederates retreated. Five days later, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, publicly declaring his intention to make abolition a goal of the war.On Monday, 17 September, at 1:30 at the VCU Student Commons Theater on the Monroe Park Campus, VCU will live stream a panel discussion at the Museum of American History about those events. Edward L. Ayers, president of the University of Richmond, will moderate, and Eric Foner (Columbia University), Thavolia Glymph (Duke University), Gary Gallaher (UVA), and Christy Coleman (American Civil War Center at Historic Tredegar) will recreate the national scene and the dilemmas facing Americans on September 22, 1862 without drawing on their knowledge of what would unfold over the next few months and years.The audience at the National Museum of American History will be comproised of college students from Maryland, the District of Columbia, and Virginia. A contingent of students from VCU will be in the audience.
Thursday, 20 September 2012.
Ta-Nehisi Coates Lecture.
The Civil War and Emancipation in the Age of ObamaVCU Commons Theater, 5:00PM Mr. Coates is a writer and senior editor for The Atlantic, where he writes about culture, politics, and social issues for TheAtlantic.com and the magazine. He is the author of the memoir The Beautiful Struggle, about growing up in Baltimore during the age of crack. Coates is currently writing his first novel, about an interracial family in pre-Civil War Virginia. Coates is a former wroter for The Village Voice, and a contributor to Time, O, and The New York Times Magazine. In 2012, he was awarded the Hillman Porize for Opinion and Analysis Journalism.
Wednesday, 3 October 2012
Louis P. Masur Lecture. "Abraham Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation."
Monroe Park Campus, VCU Student Commons Theater, 5:00PM.
A reception and book signing will follow the lecture in Commonwealth Ballroom A, 2nd floor.Professor Masur is a cultural historian whose publications include books on capital punishment, the first World Series, a transformative photograph, and a seminal rock'n'roll album. He will base this lecture on his new book, "Lincoln's Hundred Days" The Emancipation Proclamation and the War for the Union (Harvard University Press, 2012).Masur flier
Year of Freedom Brown Bag Lunchtime series
Wednesday, 12 September 2012.
Lauranette Lee, "Unknown No Longer: A New Database to Track the Enslaved."
Student Commons, Forum Room.
Wednesday, 10 October 2012.
John Shuck, "Evergreen Cemetery: Uncovering Richmond's Premier African American Burial Ground."
Larrick Center, Court End A.
Thursday, 25 October 2012.
Isabelle Richman, "The Emancipation of Sojourner Truth." Student Commons,
Virginia Room A.
Tuesday, 6 November 2012.
Leila Christenbury, "Emancipation and the Civil War: Recent and Classic Young Adult (YA) Fiction and Nonfiction."
Student Commons, Richmond Salon II
Wednesday, 28 November 2012.
Willie Anne Wright, "Civil War Redux, Through the Eye of a Pinhole Camera."
Student Commons, Forum Room.
Tuesday, 4 December 2012.
Jodi Koste, "The Medical College of Virginia during War and Reconstruction."
Larrick Center, Court End A.
William T. Blake Lecture Series.
Thursday, November 1, 2012
Richmond Salon 3 & 4, 4:00 PM (please note: this is a location change, the location on the attached flier is incorrect)
John Plotz, Professor of English at Brandeis University. "Before there was Facebook: The Long History of Distraction and Absorption"
Contact: Dr. Andrew Crislip, acrislip@vcu.edu or 804-828-0155
John Plotz flier
The Society of the Cincinnati of Virginia Annual Lecture.
Wednesday, November 7, 2012
VCU Student Commons Theater, 5:00 PM
Laura Edwards, Professor of History, Duke University. "Legal Culture in the Post-Revolutionary South"
Contact: ceastman@vcu.edu or 804-828-0053
Laura Edwards flier
