Friday, JAN 11 LUNCHEON: "GIANTS: Parallel Lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln"
JOHN STAUFFER Chairs the American Studies Program and Professor of African American Studies at Harvard. He celebrates the 150th Anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation with 9 books and 50+ articles on antislavery, race relations and the Civil War.
"GIANTS: The Parallel Lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln"
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ABOUT THE TOPIC:
Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln were the preeminent self-made men of their time. In this masterful dual biography, award-winning Harvard University scholar John Stauffer describes the transformations in the lives of these two giants during a major shift in cultural history, when men rejected the status quo and embraced new ideals of personal liberty. As Douglass and Lincoln reinvented themselves and ultimately became friends, they transformed America.
Lincoln was born dirt poor, had less than one year of formal schooling, and became the nation's greatest president. Douglass spent the first twenty years of his life as a slave, had no formal schooling-in fact, his masters forbade him to read or write-and became one of the nation's greatest writers and activists, as well as a spellbinding orator and messenger of audacious hope, the pioneer who blazed the path traveled by future African-American leaders.
At a time when most whites would not let a black man cross their threshold, Lincoln invited Douglass into the White House. Lincoln recognized that he needed Douglass to help him destroy the Confederacy and preserve the Union; Douglass realized that Lincoln's shrewd sense of public opinion would serve his own goal of freeing the nation's blacks. Their relationship shifted in response to the country's debate over slavery, abolition, and emancipation.
Both were ambitious men. They had great faith in the moral and technological progress of their nation. And they were not always consistent in their views. John Stauffer describes their personal and political struggles with a keen understanding of the dilemmas Douglass and Lincoln confronted and the social context in which they occurred. What emerges is a brilliant portrait of how two of America's greatest leaders lived.
ABOUT OUR SPEAKER:
JOHN STAUFFER is Chair of the American Studies Program and Professor of English and African American Studies at Harvard University. He is the author or editor of 9 books and more than 50 articles on subjects ranging from antislavery, race relations, and the Civil War, to photography, biography, and the importance of the arts and humanities in the 21st century. His two most recent books were national bestsellers.GIANTS: The Parallel Lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln (2008), won the Iowa Author Award and a Boston Authors Club Award and has been translated into Mandarin, Arabic, and Korean. The State of Jones (2009), co-authored with Washington Post columnist Sally Jenkins, was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize by Doubleday.
His first book, The Black Hearts of Men (2002), won four major awards, including the Frederick Douglass Book Prize co-winner, the Avery Craven Book Prize, and the Lincoln Prize runner-up.
His essays and reviews have appeared in Time Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Washington Post, Huffington Post, The New Republic, Raritan, and numerous scholarly journals. In 2009 Harvard named him the Walter Channing Cabot Fellow for “achievements and scholarly eminence in the fields of literature, history or art.” He’s also received two teaching awards from Harvard: the Everett Mendelsohn Excellence in Mentoring Award; and the Jan Thaddeus Teaching Prize.
He has appeared on national radio and television shows, including the Diane Rehm Show and Book TV with Susan Swain, and he has lectured widely throughout the United States and Europe.
Reviews:
"John Stauffer's collective biography of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln stands apart from other biographies by focusing on how each man continually remade himself, with help from women, words, self-education, physical strength, and luck.
In the process Stauffer gives us the texture and feel--a "thick description"--of the strange worlds that Douglass and Lincoln inhabited. The result is a path-breaking work that dissolves traditional conceptions of these two seminal figures (Lincoln the "redeemer" president, Douglass the assimilationist).
He reveals how Douglass towered over Lincoln as a brilliant orator, writer, agitator, and public figure for most of his life. He shows us how words became potent weapons for both men. And he tells the poignant story of how these preeminent self-made men ultimately converged, despite their vastly different agendas and politics, and helped transform the nation."
-- Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Harvard University, author of The African American Century: How Black Americans Have Shaped Our Century
"GIANTS: The Parallel Lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln"
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INVITED: All Alumni, Members and Guests
DATE: Friday, January 11, 2013
TIME:
- 11:30 am Cocktails Meet & Greet
- 12:00 Lunch
- 12:30 Speaker + Q&A
- 1:30 pm Adjourn
LOCATION: Michael's On East, 1212 East Ave. S, Sarasota
COST: BUY NOW $25 in Advance, $30 at The Door
DRESS: Business Casual and Work Wear
FAMILY FRIENDLY: Children Welcome