The Department of History and Department of English at West Virginia University will host the annual Rush D. Holt lecture on Thursday, Sept. 29, at 7:30 p.m.
This year’s speaker is
award-winning historian Martha Hodes, author of ‘Mourning Lincoln.’ Hodes’
lecture, “Mourning Lincoln: The Assassination and the Aftermath of the Civil
War,” will take place in G9 White Hall on the downtown campus.
The lecture is free and open to the public.
Responses to Lincoln’s assassination have been well chronicled, however Hodes is the first to delve into personal and private responses – of African Americans and whites, Yankees and Confederates, men and women, soldiers and civilians – to investigate the story of the nation’s first presidential assassination on a human scale.
Hodes brings to life a key moment of national uncertainty and conflict that takes us far beyond the headlines to illuminate the roots of the Civil War’s aftermath.
‘Mourning Lincoln’ won the Lincoln Prize, awarded by the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, and the Avery O. Craven Prize, awarded by the Organization of American Historians. ‘Mourning Lincoln’ was also name a finalist for the National Book award, an Editor’s Choice in the New York Times Book Review and A Best Book of 2015 by the Wall Street Journal.
Hodes is also the author of ‘The Sea Captain’s Wife,’ ‘White Women, Black Men,’ and Sex, Love, Race.’
Hodes is the recipient of numerous fellowships, including from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, Harvard University, the Fulbright Commission, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and the Whiting Foundation. She is also an elected fellow of the Society of American Historians, an organization devoted to distinguished historical writing.
