MACON — Mercer University’s Southern Studies Program will host a lecture by historian Peter H. Wood at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday in the Medical School Auditorium on the University’s Macon campus. Dr. Wood’s presentation is titled, “‘Near Andersonville:’ Winslow Homer’s Long-Lost Painting of an Enslaved Black Woman.”
Dr. Wood is an emeritus professor of history at Duke University and a leading expert on painter Winslow Homer’s images of blacks. He will share the long-hidden story of Homer’s Civil War painting, locating its setting in southwest Georgia in August 1864 and providing its military and political context.
Dr. Wood’s research interests include Colonial American history and Native American history, and he is the lead author of the United States history survey textbook, Created Equal. He received a Rhodes Scholarship in 1964 and has been awarded research fellowships from Harvard’s Charles Warren Center, the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. He is a recipient of the Albert J. Beveridge Award and the James Harvey Robinson Prize of the American Historical Association.
In 2002, Dr. Wood delivered the Lamar Lectures at Mercer in a series titled, “Weathering the Storm: Inside Winslow Homer’s Gulf Stream.”
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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