Annual Civil War Lectures Series to be Held at UA

The annual John Caldwell Calhoun Sanders Lecture Series, this year titled “Confederate Voices,” includes talks from biographical sketches and personal wartime experiences on campus and in the field to unit histories and accounts of battles or skirmishes involving some 900 UA alumni and its Corps of Cadets.

Dr. Peter Carmichael, director of the Civil War Institute and Robert C. Fluhrer Professor of Civil War Studies at Gettysburg College, will speak on “A Plea for Peace: The Literary Style of Semi-Literate Confederate.” Carmichael received his doctorate from Pennsylvania State University and was a professor of history at West Virginia University specializing in Civil War studies. He has taught at Penn State, Virginia Commonwealth University, Western Carolina University and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

Dr. Aaron Sheehan-Dean, the Fred C. Frey Professor of Southern Studies at Louisiana State University, will discuss “The Justice of our Cause: Confederate Perceptions of Violence and Morality.” Sheehan-Dean is the author of “Why Confederates Fought: Family and Nation in Civil War Virginia” and the “Concise Historical Atlas of the U.S. Civil War,” as well as the editor of several books. He teaches courses on 19th-century U.S. history, the Civil War and Reconstruction, and Southern History.

Brian Holden Reid, professor of American History and Military Institutions at King’s College London, will discuss “Robert E. Lee as Military Leader.” Reid was a former head of the Department of War Studies (2001-2007), Trustee of the Society of Military History (2003-11), Honorary Vice President of the Society for Army Historical Research and, from 2004-2010, a member of the Council of the National Army Museum, London. In 2004-2005 he was the first non-American to serve as a member of the Lincoln Prize Jury Panel for the award of the most important literary prize in Civil War history. In 2007, he was the first non-American to deliver the 12^th Elizabeth Roller Bottimore Lecture at the University of Richmond, Virginia during the Lee Bicentenary. His books include “J.F.C. Fuller: Military Thinker” (1987, 1990), “The Origins of the American Civil War” (1996), “Studies in British Military Thought” (1998), “Robert E. Lee: Icon for a Nation” (2005, 2007) and “America’s Civil War: The Operational Battlefield, 1861-1863” (2008).

Admission is free, but advance registration is requested. For more information, phone 205/348-7551 or e-mail ajones@ua.edu