TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — A series of lectures about the Civil War will be from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, April 1, in Sellers Auditorium at the Bryant Conference Center on The University of Alabama campus.
The annual John Caldwell Calhoun Sanders Lecture Series includes talks about biographical sketches and personal wartime experiences on campus and in the field as well as unit histories and accounts of battles or skirmishes involving some 900 UA alumni and the University’s Corps of Cadets.
“The J.C.C. Sanders Lecture Series is a great collaboration between UA Museums and the UA department of history,” said Dr. William Bomar, executive director of UA Museums. “The record of outstanding speakers over the last 20 years is remarkable. Besides the expected analysis of battles from a military history perspective, topics have included politics, slavery and the threat of slave rebellions, desertion of soldiers and life on the home front. The lecture provides the general public the opportunity to hear scholarly authors present their research in a way that is educational and entertaining for everyone.”
Dr. Michal LeVasseur, a retired alliance liaison for the National Geographic Society, will speak on “The Sanders’ Civil War Letters.” LeVasseur has served as executive director of the National Council for Geographic Education; director of the National Teacher Institutes for the National Geographic Society, Washington, D.C.; an adjunct professor of geography at The University of Alabama at Birmingham.
He also worked as project member and budget manager of “Finding A Way,” a National Science Foundation-funded effort to enhance the participation of young women in geography. He has presented more than 30 papers to professional geography and science organizations, and LeVasseur also has published numerous articles, chapters in books and atlases and books related to geography, science and education.
Dr. Keith Bohannon, a professor of history at the University of West Georgia in Carrollton, will speak on “Whipped the enemy back with great slaughter: The Battle of Fussell’s Mill, Va., August 16, 1864.” Bohannon is the author of numerous essays published in scholarly books and journals as well as popular publications.
Robert K. Krick will discuss “J.C.C. Sanders and the Alabama Brigade in the Seven Days Battles.” Krick has worked on East Coast battlefields for five decades. For 30 years, he was chief historian of Fredericksburg & Spotsylvania National Military Park. Krick is the author of 20 books and more than 200 published articles. His “Stonewall Jackson at Cedar Mountain” (University of North Carolina Press, 1990) won three national awards, including the Douglas Southall Freeman Prize for Best Book in Southern History. Krick’s “Conquering the Valley: Stonewall Jackson at Port Republic” (William Morrow & Co., 1996) was a main selection of the History Book Club and a selection of the Book of the Month Club. His latest book, from the University of Alabama Press (2007), is “Civil War Weather in Virginia.” During 2003-2006, Krick worked under contract on the National Museum of the Marine Corps, writing the words for the new museum’s walls.
Admission to the lecture is free, but advance registration is requested.
For more information, call 205/348-7551 or e-mail Angi Jones at ajones@ua.edu.