Civil War Lecture Series Continues at ASU

The impact of prisoner of war escapees in three Confederate states in the final months of the Civil War will be examined by Lorien Foote, professor of war and society at Texas A&M University, during Angelo State University’s Civil War Lecture Series this Thursday, Nov. 14.
The lecture, “Trails of Blood:  Escaping the Confederacy,” is scheduled for 7 p.m. Nov. 14 in the C.J. Davidson Center in the Houston Harte University Center, 1910 Rosemont Drive, on the ASU campus.  The program is the third of eight scheduled for the lecture series during the 2013-14 academic year.  All programs are open free to the public.

Foote will discuss how the presence of nearly 2,000 escaped POWs from October of 1864 to March of 1865 helped transform civilians into combatants in three Confederate States and helped bring about the collapse of Confederate authority in South Carolina even before Gen. William T. Sherman and his army invaded the state.

In researching the “Trails of Blood” topic, Foote was named a 2011 Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellow at the Huntington Research Library in San Marino, Calif.  Her ASU lecture is co-sponsored by ASU’s Gender Studies Program and the College of Arts and Sciences.

Foote is the author of two books, most recently The Gentlemen and the Roughs: Manhood, Honor, and Violence in the Union Army, which was a finalist for the 2011 Lincoln Prize. She has spoken about her work at a variety of national and local venues, including CSPAN3, the Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College, the Arkansas Literary Festival, and her personal favorite, a podcast interview on the Art of Manliness website.

She is working as co-editor with ASU Civil War historian and lecture series coordinator Dr. Kanisorn Wongsrichanalai on another book, “So Conceived and So Dedicated”: Intellectual Life in the Civil War Era North.

She holds a B.A. from the University of Kansas and a Ph.D. from the University of Oklahoma.  She previously taught at Middle Tennessee State University and the University of Central Arkansas, where she won the Teaching Excellence Award in 2010 as the university’s outstanding teacher.  She teaches courses on the Civil War, 19^th century reform movements, and war/society.

In addition to the ASU History Department, the Civil War Lecture Series is supported by Fort Concho; Fort Concho Foundation; the Office of the ASU Dean of Arts and Sciences; ASU’s Gender Studies Program; the West Texas Collection; the Porter Henderson Library; Shannon Medical Center; the Texas Historical Commission; the National Endowment for the Humanities; the Library of America; and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.

Other upcoming programs and speakers in the series are:

• Jan. 28:  “The Environment of War,” 7 p.m., Davidson Center, Drs. Kenna Archer and Jason Pierce of ASU’s History Department.

  Feb. 17:  “Memory and Meaning:  Civil War Memorials and Their Artistic Antecedents,” 7 p.m., Davidson Center, Dr. Kimberly Busby of ASU’s Department of Visual and Performing Arts.

  March 4:  “The Texas Historical Commission’s Sesquicentennial Activities,” 7 p.m., Davidson Center, William McWhorter, program coordinator, Military Sites Program, History Programs Division, Texas Historical Commission.

  March 27:  “Baseball and the Civil War,” 6 p.m. period baseball game, Fort Concho parade grounds, and 7 p.m. lectures, Fort Concho Stables, Bob Bluthardt, site manager, Fort Concho, and Dr. David Dewar of ASU’s History Department.

  April 22:  “Medicine and the Civil War,” 7 p.m., Fort Concho Stables, Dr. Robert Hicks, Measey Chair for the History of Medicine and director of the Mutter Museum and Historical Medical Library at the College of Physicians of Philadelphia.