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Topics for the free, public lectures include Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s environmental policies in the American South, the 1958 Maxton Riot between the Ku Klux Klan and the Lumbee Indians and the new literature of the Global South that draws upon themes from the Haitian Revolution.

Notably, William W. Freehling, senior fellow of the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, will speak on the third volume of “The Road to Disunion” (Oxford University Press, 2007), his trilogy that offers a major reinterpretation of the Civil War and of Confederate defeat. More information about the trilogy is on the press Web site at http://www.us.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/HistoryAmerican/CivilWarReconstruction/?view=usa&ci=9780195058154. A complete lecture schedule follows.

The lectures will take place Tuesdays at 3:30 p.m. in the Royall Room of the George Watts Hill Alumni Center on the Carolina campus, with support from the UNC General Alumni Association. Refreshments will be served. The Alumni Center is located on Stadium Drive near the Bell Tower and Kenan Stadium. Parking is available in the Rams Head Parking Deck (in Rams Head Center) on Ridge Road. Please see the Center’s Web site for directions at http://www.unc.edu/depts/csas/Hutchins/venues.html and the Chapel Hill Transit Web site for a full listing of routes and schedules (http://www.ci.chapel-hill.nc.us/transit/routes/all_routes.html) that service the Alumni Center. 

The James A. Hutchins Lectures enrich the cultural life of the university and the Chapel Hill community with insights from southern arts and letters. The series is named in honor of James Alexander Hutchins Jr. (1917-2002), a distinguished Carolina alumnus. For more information about the lectures, visit the Center’s Web site at www.unc.edu/depts/csas.

Fall 2007 James A. Hutchins Lecture Series

Sept. 11: “FDR and the Environment: The Southern Front”
Historian Otis L. Graham Jr. places FDR’s conservation record in historical context, especially his administration’s efforts to address the environmental problems of the American South.

Sept. 18: “The Media, the Klan, and the Lumbee Indians of North Carolina”
Historian Christopher Arris Oakley will discuss how the media coverage of the 1958 “Maxton Riot,” in which the Lumbee Indians broke up a KKK rally, reinforced negative Indian stereotypes, foreshadowing Indian peoples’ struggle to establish identity in the modern South.

Oct. 9: “Proslavery Extremists and the Counter-revolutionary Confederacy”
Historian Robert E. Bonner explores the forgotten wartime writings of the 1850s “reactionary Enlightenment” that anticipated the underside of a conservative tradition shaped by war, sacrifice, and authoritarian politics.

Oct. 30:  “The Road to Disunion: The Climactic Uncertainty”
William W. Freehling, author of a three-volume reinterpretation of the Civil War published by Oxford University Press, discusses the importance of the secessionists’ minority triumph in understanding the war and the Southerners who waged it.

Nov. 6: “Unleashing the Loas: The Literary Legacy of the Haitian Revolution in the U.S. South and the Caribbean”
The Haitian Revolution sent tremors of terror through the U.S. South. John Wharton Lowe discusses the recent fiction that finally explores this dynamic.