Athens, Ga. – American historian and Duke University Professor Emeritus Peter Wood will present the 2011 Gregory Lecture in the University of Georgia Chapel on Monday, Oct. 10 at 3:30 p.m. Wood’s illustrated talk, Near Andersonville, 1864: Stoneman’s Failed Raid and Homer’s Lost Picture, is free and open to the public.
A National Book Award nominee and winner of the Beveridge Prize of the American Historical Association, Wood joined the history department at Duke University in 1975 and retired in 2008. He has held fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, Harvard University’s Warren Center and the National Endowment for the Humanities. In 2009, Wood gave the Nathan I. Huggins Lectures in Afro-American Studies at Harvard, which was published by Harvard University Press in 2010 as Near Andersonville: Winslow Homer’s Civil War.
In addition to his public lecture, Wood will spend the week of Oct. 10 -14 at UGA as a visiting scholar in the history department of the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, hosting a seminar for graduate students in the department. The Gregory Lecture is supported by the Amanda and Greg Gregory Civil War Era Studies Support Fund.
“Peter Wood is a renowned historian whose recent book Near Andersonville is engrossing and deeply meaningful,” said Claudio Saunt, the Richard B. Russell Professor of American History at UGA. “By exploring the mystery behind a Civil War painting by the famous American artist Winslow Homer, he opens new vistas on Stoneman’s disastrous incursion to liberate the prisoners at Andersonville. I am looking forward to his lecture.”
The University of Georgia Franklin College of Arts and Sciences is the oldest and largest college on campus. With more than 650 faculty and 15,000 students-in 30 departments and more than 25 programs, institutes and centers-the Franklin College spans disciplines from anthropology to women’s studies and includes the Lamar Dodd School of Art and the Hugh Hodgson School of Music. For more information, see www.franklin.uga.edu.