OXFORD, Miss. – Historian Eric Foner is the keynote speaker for the 2013 Conference on the Civil War and Porter Fortune Jr. History Symposium, which begins at 6 p.m. Thursday (Oct. 3) at the University of Mississippi.
Foner, who is the DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University, plans to discuss “The Emancipation of Abraham Lincoln.” The event, in Nutt Auditorium, is free and open to the public.
The university is fortunate to have a historian of Foner’s caliber for the event, said John R. Neff, director of the UM Center for Civil War Research.
“Eric Foner is probably the most prominent, most important historian of the Civil War and Reconstruction eras,” Neff said. “We’re very happy to host such a distinguished scholar.”
Foner is author of “Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution” (Harper & Row, 1988). His most recent work, “The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery” (W.W. Norton & Co., 2010), won the Pulitzer Prize for History, the Bancroft Prize and the Lincoln Prize, among other awards.
Following Foner’s speech, the Civil War/Porter Fortune Jr. History Symposium continues Friday and Saturday with panels both days running from 8:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. in Butler Auditorium at the Triplett Alumni Center. Speakers include Nina Silber of Boston University, Wendy Hamand Venet of George State University, Jim Downs of Connecticut College and J. David Hacker of the University of Minnesota.
This is the center’s seventh Civil War conference. This year, the event happens in conjunction with the Department of History’s Porter Fortune Jr. Symposium. The conference is also free and open to the public. The schedule and other information can be found online.
The Center for Civil War Research was established at the university in 2009. Its aim is to promote a more thorough understanding of the war, its history and its scholarship among the university community. The Porter L. Fortune Jr. History Symposium started in 1975 as an annual conference on Southern history. It was named for Fortune, the university’s 13th chancellor, in 1983 to honor his contributions to the symposium.
For more information, visit http://civilwarcenter.olemiss.edu or email civilwar@olemiss.edu.
By Michael Newsom