Serving Boone, Blowing Rock, Banner Elk, and other towns of the North Carolina High Country
Founded 05-05-05
February 21, 2008 issue
Scholar Nell Painter Discusses Black History March 3
Story by Anna Oakes
Black history is the subject of the next lecture in Appalachian State University’s newly reinstalled University Forum series, and historian Nell Irvin Painter is the speaker.
Her lecture, titled Creating Black Americans, takes place on Monday, March 3, at 8:00 p.m. in Farthing Auditorium. The talk is derived from her book of the same name; it traces the history of black Americans from slavery to the present, supplemented by the works of black artists. The lecture is free and open to the public.
Painter is a Harvard University graduate who became the Edwards Professor Emeritus of American History at Princeton University. She is the author of six books and numerous articles relating to American and Southern history. Painter’s Southern History Across the Color Line focuses on relationships between men and women of different races, crossing the partitions separating Southern history, women’s history and black history.
Howie Neufeld, chair of the University Forum Committee, said Painter was recommended as a speaker for the series because of her distinguished career and because her topic is a “subject of interest to the community here.”
“The university has a strong commitment to increasing diversity,” Neufeld said.
Painter has requested the use of an overhead projector, probably to display artwork to accompany her lecture, he said. A moderated Q&A session will follow her speech.
Painter served as president of the Southern Historical Association in 2007 and is the 2007-08 president of the Organization of American Historians. She has been a fellow of the Guggenheim Foundation, the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Bunting Institute and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford. She is a recipient of the Brown Publication Prize awarded by the Association of Black Woman Historians. Her book, Sojourner Truth: A Life, A Symbol, won the nonfiction prize of the Black Caucus of the American Library Association.
Prior to joining the Princeton faculty in 1988, she taught at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Painter’s lecture follows a February 4 visit to campus by feminist activist Gloria Steinem, who spoke to a packed house of more than 1,700 in the first lecture of the speaker series.
Before being reinstated this year, the University Forum series at Appalachian ran from 1986 to 2002, when it was discontinued because of lack of funding. Past speakers in the series include Elie Wiesel, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Spike Lee, Helen Thomas, bell hooks, Maya Angelou, Ralph Nader, Anita Hill and Noam Chomsky.
The University Forum committee currently is at work scheduling an ambitious lineup for next year’s series in conjunction with the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin. The series will celebrate issues raised by Darwin and his theory of evolution, with theorists, historians, philosophers of science, a theologian, biologists, paleontologists and artists. The schedule will include a speaker every two or three weeks throughout the year, Neufeld said.
For more information about the University Forum series or to make suggestions for speakers, click to universityforum.appstate.edu or call 828-262-7660.
Want To Go?
Date: Monday, March 3
Time: 8:00 p.m.
Location: Farthing Auditorium
Cost: Free