Can include specific descriptions of different eras, major works, and/or individual composers. Any talk will feature in-depth historical context and stories about major composers of the time period.
One of the most interesting dynamics of eighteenth-century literature is the emergence of women writers. This talk will examine how early women novelists took the stories they inherited from male authors and retold them in ways that were quietly subversive. This process of appropriation and redirection continues today and provides important insight on how art … Read more
As we are bombarded daily by ever-coarsening political discourse, it is tempting to long for a gentler, perhaps more civil, age. Imagining a past similar to the worlds of Jane Austen novels, we sometimes project our wishes onto the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This talk will suggest that what we are experiencing in America today … Read more
Today we think of novels as little more than entertainment. When the genre emerged in the eighteenth century, novels also had an almost medicinal function: they were texts that helped readers regulate their passions. Drawing on recent scholarship, this talk will explain how reading fiction was thought to improve health. Equally important, it will explore … Read more
The French and Indian War pitted the colonies of British America against those of New France, each side supported by military units from the parent country and by American Indian allies. Humphries discusses the experiences of this often-forgotten conflict and the outcome that caused the colonists to want to fight for independence from England.
There is much more to the role of South Carolina than just what happened on the battlefield! In this presentation, Aliene Humphries talks about the fascinating but little-known stories of the Revolutionary War’s Southern Campaigns both on and off the battlefield. She has 64 sites included in the timeline of events. This talk correspondings with Aliene’s … Read more
