HISTORY LECTURE SERIES - GLOBAL BORDERS: LOOKING BACK TO LOOK FORWARD

Six-Week Series

Dates: Six Mondays, Oct. 6–Nov. 10
Time: 6:30–8 p.m.
Location: See Course Locations and Parking page
Series Fee: $150 (discounted to $120 for select groups)
Single Lecture: $30

This lecture series draws on the concept of borders—political, philosophical, cultural, social—to provide Odyssey participants with a fascinating look at some of history's most compelling stories. Organized through the Institute for Historical Studies at The University of Texas at Austin, this series features dynamic professors from the Department of History.

October 6

THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR—HOW ELSE MIGHT IT HAVE ENDED?

George Forgie, Ph.D., History, UT Austin

Modern observers of the American Civil War tend to assume that there was only one alternative to Union military victory: Southern military victory, leading to Confederate independence and two nations uneasily co-existing in place of the United States. But people who lived during the Civil War saw many other plausible outcomes, including the eventual reunion of the former United States under Confederate domination. This lecture examines the possible boundaries that Americans contemplated when they imagined how their war might end.

October 13

THE RACE GOES ON:
BEN-HUR, POPULAR RELIGION AND AMERICAN CULTURE SINCE 1880

Howard Miller, Ph.D., History, UT Austin

How has the United States managed to become "modern" without also becoming thoroughly secular? How can we explain the "persistence of the sacred" in American culture? The history of the best-selling novel Ben-Hur can help us answer that important question.

October 20

"I AM A MAN!":
RACE, MEMORY, AND THE BLACK FREEDOM MOVEMENT IN THE URBAN SOUTH

Laurie Green, Ph.D., History, UT Austin

Forty years after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the 1968 Memphis Sanitation Strike, historians are rethinking the roots and legacies of the Civil Rights Movement. This lecture explores such topics as labor, gender, migration, and mass culture to consider what brought tens of thousands to proclaim in 1968, "I am a man!"

October 27

VISUALIZING GENOCIDE:
THE HOLOCAUST IN PHOTOGRAPHS SINCE 1945

David Crew, Ph.D., History, UT Austin

Photographs of the Holocaust were taken by the SS, by American, British, and Russian liberators, and even by some concentration camp prisoners. How have these photographic images been used since 1945 to depict the horrors of Nazi genocide? What have they been able to show us? What have they been unable to reveal?

November 3

THE MAKING OF THE FIRST ATOMIC BOMBS

Bruce Hunt, Ph.D., History, UT Austin

The United States detonated the world's first nuclear explosion in the New Mexico desert in July 1945 and, just over three weeks later, dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Japanese surrendered just a few days later, but the threat of nuclear weapons has loomed over us ever since. This lecture will examine the mix of science, technology, and politics that went into the making of the first atomic bombs. It is a dramatic story with reverberations still felt today.

November 10

PLAYING CHESS AT MONTICELLO:
"REASONING" WITH THOMAS JEFFERSON AT THE START OF THE 21ST CENTURY

Robert Olwell, Ph.D., History, UT Austin

Thomas Jefferson was one of the most extraordinary figures of the late eighteenth century. He exhibited attitudes towards race, science, women, religion, and politics that were insightful and often contradictory. His conduct as a politician, husband, father, and slave master was equally complex. This lecture examines how Jefferson was both an exemplar of his age and a trailblazer whose words and deeds seem to presage and even prophesy America's future—for both good and ill.