Mercer Southern Studies Program to Hold Yearlong Series on Civil Rights

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MACON – Mercer University’s Southern Studies Program will hold a year of special events, titled “Remembering the Civil Rights Movement,” which will include the department’s long-running Lamar Lecture Series. The Lamar Lecturer for 2010 is Dr. Minrose Gwin, eminent professor of English at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She will present three lectures titled “Remembering Medgar Evers: Aesthetics, Justice, and the Long Civil Rights Movement,” as well as a reading from her novel, The Queen of Palmyra.

Dr. Gwin’s lectures will be held at 10 a.m. on Oct. 18 and at 7:30 p.m. on Oct. 18 and Oct. 19 in the Medical School Auditorium on the University’s Macon campus. The lectures are all free and open to the public. In addition, she will read from her novel at 7:30 p.m. on Oct. 20 in the Medical School Auditorium.

Dr. Gwin is author of four nonfiction books, including Black and White Women of the Old South: The Peculiar Sisterhood in American Literature, The Feminine and Faulkner: Reading (Beyond) Sexual Difference and The Woman in the Red Dress: Gender, Space, and Reading. She edited or co-edited a number of books and anthologies and serves as co-editor of Southern Literary Journal. She has also published a memoir, Wishing for Snow.

This year marks the 53rd anniversary of the Lamar Lecture Series, which has become one of the most prominent lecture series on Southern culture and history. Over the years, the series has welcomed presentations by renowned historians, sociologists and literary scholars.

In addition to the lectures, the Southern Studies program will hold a film series, co-sponsored by The Macon Film Festival. The series includes three films focused on the civil rights movement and will be held on at the Cox Capitol Theatre in downtown Macon. Admission is $5 for general admission and $3 for Mercer students. The films are Ghosts of Mississippi on Oct. 4, Mississippi Burning on Jan. 31, 2011, and 4 Little Girls on March 21, 2011.

The series also includes two lectures in the spring. The first will be given by Hank Klibanoff at 7:30 p.m., Wednesday, Feb. 9, in the Medical School Auditorium. Klibanoff is the James M. Cox Chair of Journalism at Emory University and the Pulitzer-Prize winning author of The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of America. Anthony Grooms will present the second lecture at 7:30 p.m. on April 6 in the Medical School Auditorium. Dr. Grooms is a professor of English at Kennesaw State University and author of Bombingham, which won the Lillian Smith prize for literature and racial justice.

About the Lamar Lecture Series
Made possible by the bequest of the late Eugenia Dorothy Blount Lamar, the Lamar Lecture Series began in 1957. The series promotes the permanent preservation of Southern culture, history and literature. Given each fall, it is recognized as the most important series on Southern history and literature in the United States. Speakers have included nationally and internationally known scholars, such as Cleanth Brooks, James C. Cobb and Eugene Genovese. All lectures are original and are published as books following the lectures.

About Mercer University
Founded in 1833, Mercer University is a dynamic and comprehensive center of undergraduate, graduate and professional education. The University enrolls more than 8,200 students in 11 schools and colleges – liberal arts, law, pharmacy, medicine, business, engineering, education, theology, music, nursing and continuing and professional studies – on major campuses in Macon, Atlanta and Savannah and at three regional academic centers across the state. Mercer is affiliated with two teaching hospitals – Memorial University Medical Center in Savannah and the Medical Center of Central Georgia in Macon, and has educational partnerships with Warner Robins Air Logistics Center in Warner Robins and Piedmont Healthcare in Atlanta. The University operates an academic press and a performing arts center in Macon and an engineering research center in Warner Robins. Mercer is the only private university in Georgia to field an NCAA Division I athletic program. For more information, visit www.mercer.edu.
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