The College of Charleston’s Department of Communication, Carolina Lowcountry Atlantic World
Photo of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. by Jeff Kubina.
(CLAW) program and the Friends of the Library are pleased to host Richard Carwardine, author of Lincoln: A Life of Purpose and Power for a March 11, 2015, lecture. The free event will take place at 2 p.m., with the doors open to media at 1:30 p.m., at the Tate Center (9 Liberty St.) room 202.
Carwardine, who serves as president of Corpus Christi College at Oxford University, will speak in commemoration of Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural address. CLAW Executive Director and Clemson Professor O. Vernon Burton will give introductions and moderate a question-and-answer session following Carwardine’s remarks.
“This is a significant event for our campus,” Associate Professor of Communication Kathleen DeHaan said. “Richard Carwardine is a distinguished scholar, known internationally for his work on Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln’s Second Inaugural is without question one of the most important rhetorical texts in the history of this country. To have an opportunity to hear this scholar talk about this speech – is a rare intellectual gift.”
Associate Director of CLAW Simon Lewis added, “the reconciliatory tone that Lincoln struck in the speech is of tremendous significance now in a period when people can still take surprisingly intransigent and intolerant attitudes because they are still unwilling to give up old grievances. The fact that Lincoln was not able to show us how he would have put his reconciliatory rhetoric into practice because he was cut down by an assassin’s bullet some six weeks after the address is surely one of the great tragedies of American political history.”
This event is part of CLAW’s commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, and the Bully Pulpit Series’ programming on presidential political communication in the U.S. It is also part of the Wells Fargo Distinguished Lecture Series.
