Serving Boone, Blowing Rock, Banner Elk, and other towns of the North Carolina High Country
Founded 05-05-05

Award-Winning Scholar and Writer Nell Irvin Painter at ASU March 3

ASU is welcoming award-winning scholar and writer Nell Irvin Painter, one of the pre-eminent historians in America today, to its campus on Monday, March 3, as part of the university’s Forum Lecture Series. Painter’s visit will include interactions with students and faculty members, and will culminate with a public lecture on the evening of March 3, entitled “Creating Black Americans.” The lecture is scheduled at 8:00 p.m. in Farthing Auditorium, and is free and open to the public.

Painter’s visit and lecture are presented by Appalachian’s University Forum Committee and administered by the University College. Her appearance 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 recently revitalized speaker series.

“I think the subject of Dr. Nell Painter’s talk, ‘Creating Black Americans,’ will resonate with many here in the High Country,” explained Howie Neufeld, chair of the University Forum Committee. “The title derives from her latest book of the same name, in which she traces the history of Black Americans from the time of slavery up to the present, but gives this journey a unique twist by exploring the meaning and historical significance of these events through the eyes of black artists—using their photographs, paintings and quilts. The end result will be a visually stimulating presentation of black history that everyone will thoroughly enjoy.”

A graduate of Harvard University, Painter went on to become the Edwards Professor Emeritus of American History at Princeton University. She is the author of six books and countless articles relating to the history of the American South. She has written Southern History Across the Color Line, which moves across the divides that have compartmentalized southern history, women's history and African American history by focusing on relationships among men and women of different races. Her most current book, Creating Black Americans, presents the story of people of African descent in the United States, from their American beginnings to the present time, and features a wealth of African American art.

Painter's prominence has been recognized by her selection to be President of the Southern Historical Association for 2007, and President of the Organization of American Historians for 2007-2008.

Her critically acclaimed book, Sojourner Truth: A Life, A Symbol, won the nonfiction prize of the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. In Sojourner Truth, Painter focuses on the life of the black abolitionist and women's rights advocate. A related article, "Representing Truth: Sojourner Truth's Knowing and Becoming Known," appeared in The Journal of American History. Her current research project builds on her analysis of Sojourner Truth's photographs and concerns personal beauty.

From 1997-2000 she directed the Program in African-American Studies at Princeton University. She received her undergraduate degree from the University of California, Berkeley, her M.A. from the University of California at Los Angeles and her Ph.D. from Harvard University. She has done further study at the University of Bordeaux, France, and the University of Ghana, West Africa. Prior to joining the faculty of Princeton in 1988 she taught at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

At Princeton, Painter taught the history of white people to graduates and undergraduates and interdisciplinary approaches to graduate students. Much of her writing has been concerned with southerners such as Hosea Hudson, Gertrude Thomas and Wilbur Cash. In more recent years she has been writing on the United States as a whole, as exemplified in her third book, Standing at Armageddon: The United States, 1877-1919, which won the Letitia Brown Memorial Publication Prize. Painter's other books include The Narrative of Hosea Hudson: His Life as a Negro Communist in the South and Exodusters: Black Migration to Kansas after Reconstruction.

Painter has been a fellow of the Guggenheim Foundation, the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History, the Bunting Institute and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford. She has been a recipient of the Brown Publication Prize, awarded by the Association of Black Woman Historians and has been a fellow of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

For additional details about the University Forum Series, and Nell Irvin Painter’s appearance at Appalachian, call 828-262-7660, or click to www.universityforum.appstate.edu.

Want To Go?

Date: Monday, March 3
Time: 8:00 p.m.
Location: Farthing Auditorium, ASU
Cost: Free