Prominent African-American studies researcher to give annual Tuttle lecture
More Information
LAWRENCE — A leading historian of the African-American experience in the American West will give the annual Bill Tuttle Distinguished Lecture in American Studies at the University of Kansas.
The event will be at 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 2, in the Kansas Union's Woodruff Auditorium. It is free and open to the public.
Quintard Taylor, who holds the Scott and Dorothy Bullitt Professorship of American History at the University of Washington, will present "Freedom's Frontier: Kansas and the Idea of African American Liberty, 1856-1877."
Taylor is a pioneering scholar of the African-American experience in the American West. He is the author of a number of books, including "In Search of the Racial Frontier: African Americans in the American West, 1528-1990" (1998); and "The Forging of a Black Community: Seattle's Central District from 1870 through the Civil Rights Era" (1994). He is also the co-editor of "African American Women Confront the West, 1600-2000" (2003); and he and a group of volunteeer associates have created a valuable online website resource center for African-American history. Taylor has just completed his term as the 50th president of the Western History Association.
In 2008, KU and the students, friends and family of Tuttle established the Tuttle Lecture to honor him for his 40 years of academic excellence in research and teaching, as well as his service to the university, the Lawrence community and the nation. The Tuttle Lecture focuses on Tuttle's primary teaching, research and civic concerns: African-American history and culture and recent American society and politics. The Tuttle Lecture provides an open forum for distinguished lecturers to talk frankly about American culture and society, speaking truth to power.
Sponsors of the Tuttle Lecture are the Office of the Provost, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Hall Center for the Humanities and the Departments of American Studies, African and African American Studies, and History.