The Department of History at West Virginia University will feature historian Nathaniel Wood as its 2017 Callahan Lecture speaker.
Wood will present his talk “Backwardness and Rushing Forward: The Age of Speed in a ‘Suburb of Europe,’” at 7:30 p.m. March 27, in G09 White Hall. The talk is free and open to the public.
A professor of history at the University of Kansas, Wood’s research interests include 19th and 20th century Eastern Europe, Poland, modern Europe, urban and cultural history and speed and transportation technologies.
As Wood began to conduct research for his second book, a cultural history of bicycling, motoring and aviation in Poland from 1885 to 1939, he noticed a trenchant irony: that the quintessential experience of the age of speed and modernity just might be the sensation of feeling behind. Wood believes that we experience modernity as a thrilling and often terrifying race in which we participate, but rarely come out on top.
The Callahan Lectures series was established in 1964 in honor of James Morton Callahan. Callahan served as chair of the WVU Department of History from 1902 to 1929, then as dean of the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences from 1916 to 1929 and University Research Professor from 1929 to 1956.
The Big XII Faculty Fellowship Program makes Wood’s visit to WVU possible.
