Historian delivers ECU’s Brewster lecture

GREENVILLE, NC   (Nov. 14, 2002)   —   Eric Foner, an award-winning author and historian whose books have covered all facets of American history including the history of race relations, will present East Carolina University’s annual Lawrence F. Brewster Lecture in History on Thursday, Nov. 21.

Dr. Foner is the DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University. His presentation,”The Idea of Freedom in the American Century,” is scheduled for 8 p.m. in the Great Room at Mendenhall Student Center. The public is invited. Foner’s books include “Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party Before the Civil War,” “Tom Paine and Revolutionary America,” “Nothing But Freedom: Emancipation and Its Legacy and Reconstruction” and “America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877.” The volumes have won numerous awards. His most recent book, “The Story of American Freedom,” was published in 1998. A collection of his essays, “Who Owns History: Rethinking the Past in a Changing World,” appeared last spring.

In addition, Foner is curator of two historical exhibitions; “A House Divided: America in the Age of Lincoln,” at the Chicago Historical Society, and “America’s Reconstruction: People and Politics After the Civil War,” a traveling exhibit. Foner is a past president of the Organization of American Historians and the American Historical Association. He has taught at Cambridge University, Oxford University and at Moscow State University as a Fulbright Lecturer in American History.

The lecture series is named for the late Dr. Lawrence F. Brewster, a former member of the ECU history faculty.