Conversations with public intellectuals on the relevance of history to contemporary times will be hosted by Dr. Martha Norkunas, Professor of Oral and Public History and the History Department of Middle Tennessee State University.
Join leading thinkers as they reflect on the challenges and nuances of presenting history with and for diverse publics; the intersections of memory, history and the silencing of Black and indigenous pasts; race, slavery, and the Civil War in American memory; and the role of the National Park Service in understanding the past.
Thursday, March 4, 2021, 7:00-8:30 pm CST
Slavery, Abolition, Secession and the National Park Service
Dr. Dwight Pitcaithley, former chief historian of the National Park Service and author of The U.S. Constitution and Secession: A Documentary Anthology of Slavery and White Supremacy in conversation with Mr. Rolf Diamant, former director of Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site and author of the forthcoming Olmsted And Yosemite: Civil War, Abolition, And The National Park Idea.
Thursday, April 8, 2021, 7:00-8:30 pm CST
Race, Gender, Indigeneity, and the Meaning of Narrative and Excavated Pasts Dr. Maria Franklin, Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Texas Austin and an historic archaeologist of the Black experience from the colonial period to the early 20th century in conversation with Dr. Kendra Field, Associate Professor in the Department of History at Tufts University and author of Growing Up with the Country: Family, Race, and Nation after the Civil War and Dr. Nedra Lee, Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Massachusetts Boston and an historic archaeologist specializing in the African Diaspora, gender, critical race studies, and processes of racial formation during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Dr. Martha Norkunas is the author of The Politics of Public Memory and Monuments and Memory. Her research examines the representations of cultural memory in narrative and on the landscape, and how those representations intersect with race, gender, class and power.
The webinar questions will be moderated by Dr. Brad Wright, historian of the Americas whose research focuses on post-1968 Mexico, urban and environmental history, rural migration, popular political culture, religion, class, and social movements.
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