On Nov. 7-9, historians Orville Vernon Burton and Harold Holzer will give signature lectures at the 32nd annual Symposium on the Nineteenth Century Press, the Civil War, and Free Expression.
Notable speakers
This event, hosted by Augusta University‘s Department of Communication, is co-sponsored by the Katherine Reese Pamplin College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences.
“We are extremely fortunate that the symposium is now housed at Augusta University,” said Dr. David Bulla, the university’s Professor of Communication. “This is the second year in a row at AU after 32 years at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.”
Bulla commented on Burton and Holzer, saying: “We have two excellent speakers this year in Vernon Burton from Clemson and Harold Holzer from Hunter College, both of whom are major-league experts on Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War.”
Symposium events
Burton will present the inaugural Hazel Dicken-Garcia Distinguished Lecture for the symposium on its opening day, Thursday Nov. 7. This lecture is named in honor of the late Hazel Dicken-Garcia, a journalism historian at the University of Minnesota who was highly recognized for her study of 19th century press ethics.
Dicken-Garcia was one of the original founders of the symposium and one of the country’s leading authorities on 19th-century journalism history.
The society’s three-day program also invites panel and paper submissions dealing with media, broadly defined in the 19th century.
“Our paper presenters and panels are also outstanding. We have papers on the antebellum, Reconstruction press, Gilded Age, African American and international press,” said Bulla.
Recent topics have included the Civil War of fiction and history, slavery and abolition, coverage of presidents and legislatures, the minority and foreign language press, the illustrated press, sensationalism, reporting on the arts, and spiritualism and the supernatural.
Stacy Thompson, from the Department of History, will also host a panel on Augusta in the 19th century, and will give a tour of Augusta University’s campus which was in play during the war.
The symposium will conclude at the Augusta Canal Museum with a boat ride on the canal.
