Civil War Era Politics Expert To Give Brose Lecture

March 16, 2001

University Park, Pa. -- A leading authority on 19th-century American politics, Dr. Michael F. Holt, the Langbourne M. Williams Professor of American History and chair of the Corcoran Department of History at the University of Virginia, will speak on "Rethinking the Political History of the Civil War Era" as part of the Steven and Janice Brose Distinguished Lecture Series in the Era of the Civil War on Wednesday, April 11, in 121 Sparks Building, Penn State's University Park campus at 5:30 p.m.

The lecture is free and open to the public.

?Holt will discuss the place and impact of the Civil War era, approximately 1854-1877, on the course of American political development in the 19th century.

Among his many books are: "The Civil War and Reconstruction," 3rd edition revised, with Jean H. Baker and David Herbert Donald (W.W. Norton, 2001); "The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party: Jacksonian Politics and the Onset of the Civil War," Oxford University Press, 1999; and "Political Parties and American Political Development from the Age of Jackson to the Age of Lincoln," LSU Press, 1992.

Holt has been a fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences and of the National Humanities Center, and in 1993-94, he was the Pitt Professor of American History and Institutions at Cambridge University.

Sponsored by Penn State's Civil War Era Center, the Brose Lecture Series was established by an endowment from Steven Brose, a graduate of Penn State in political science, and his wife, Janice, who also attended the university. The Civil War Era Center conducts innovative research on the social, political, economic, and cultural studies associated with the Civil War Era in the U.S., as well as the more traditional emphasis on the military. The Center is an initiative of the College of the Liberal Arts and its Department of History. For more information, go to: http://www3.la.psu.edu/histrlst/inst/welcome.html

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