MACON — Mercer University’s Southern Studies Program will hold a semester of special events, titled “Civil War Memory,” that will include the 55th annual Lamar Memorial Lecture Series. The Lamar lecturer for 2012 is Dr. Michael Kreyling, the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor of English at Vanderbilt University. Dr. Kreyling’s theme will be “A Late Encounter with the Civil War.” The lectures are all free and open to the public.
Dr. Kreyling will present three lectures in the Medical School Auditorium on the University’s Macon campus. The first is titled “Race Suicide and the Civil War: Semicentennial” and will be held at 10 a.m. on Oct. 15; the second, “Civil Rights and the Civil War: Centennial,” at 7:30 p.m. on Oct. 15; and the third, “The Afterlife of the Civil War: Sesquicentennial,” at 7:30 p.m. on Oct. 16.
Dr. Kreyling is the author of six books, including The South that Wasn’t There: Postsouthern History and Memory, Inventing Southern Literature and Eudora Welty’s Achievement of Order. He was Fulbright Professor of American Studies at University of Naples in 1994. Dr. Kreyling is a member of the Modern Language Association and the American Literature Association and past president of the Society for the Study of Southern Literature. He received his Bachelor of Arts from Thomas More College and his Master of Arts and Ph.D. from Cornell University.
The Lamar Lecture Series is the most prominent lecture series on Southern culture and history. Over the years, the series has welcomed presentations by renowned historians, sociologists and literary scholars.
The Southern Studies series also includes a lecture given by Dr. Coleman Hutchison, titled “Apocalypse Then: Slavery, Civil War, and Southern Speculative Fiction, 1836-1860,” at 3 p.m., Friday, Nov. 2, in Newton Hall.This lecture is also free and open to the public. Dr. Hutchison is an assistant professor of English at the University of Texas at Austin and author of Apples and Ashes: Literature, Nationalism, and the Confederate States of America published in 2012. His essays have appeared in American Literary History, Comparative American Studies, The Emily Dickinson Journal and PMLA. Dr. Hutchison currently has two books in process: The Ditch is Nearer: Race, Place, and American Poetry, 1863-2009 and a biography of “Dixie.” Dr. Hutchison’s lecture is sponsored by the Georgia Humanities Council.
In the spring, the Southern Studies program will host the Southern Intellectual History Circle conference, and it will award the second Sidney Lanier Prize in Southern Literature. The first award was bestowed on renowned Louisiana author Ernest J. Gaines in April.
About the Lamar Lecture Series
Made possible by the bequest of the late Eugenia Dorothy Blount Lamar, the Lamar Lecture Series began in 1957. The series promotes the permanent preservation of Southern culture, history and literature. Given each fall, it is recognized as the most important series on Southern history and literature in the United States. Speakers have included nationally and internationally known scholars, such as Cleanth Brooks, James C. Cobb and Eugene Genovese. All lectures are original and are published as books following the lectures.
About Mercer University
Founded in 1833, Mercer University is a dynamic and comprehensive center of undergraduate, graduate and professional education. The University enrolls more than 8,300 students in 11 schools and colleges – liberal arts, law, pharmacy, medicine, business, engineering, education, theology, music, nursing and continuing and professional studies – on campuses in Macon, Atlanta and Savannah – and four regional academic centers across the state. The Mercer Health Sciences Center launched July 1, 2012, and includes the University’s medical, nursing and pharmacy schools and will add a fourth college – the College of Health Professions – on July 1, 2013. Mercer is affiliated with four teaching hospitals — Memorial University Medical Center in Savannah, the Medical Center of Central Georgia in Macon, and The Medical Center and St. Francis Hospital in Columbus. The University also has educational partnerships with Warner Robins Air Logistics Complex in Warner Robins and Piedmont Healthcare in Atlanta. It operates an academic press and a performing arts center in Macon and an engineering research center in Warner Robins. Mercer is the only private university in Georgia to field an NCAA Division I athletic program. www.mercer.edu
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