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LEXINGTON, Ky.—In commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the American Civil War, four prominent scholars of nineteenth-century American history and legal history took part in “The Civil War and Reconstruction in the Border States: History and Memory at the Sesquicentennial. Taped at Transylvania University’s Haggin Auditorium, the Michael Breeding Media film will air on Kentucky Educational Television (KET and KET KY) through September 24 and October 11-15. Participants include David W. Blight, professor of American history, Yale University; Annette Gordon-Reed, professor of law and history, Harvard University; and John McCardell Jr., vice-chancellor, The University of the South. Jed Shugerman, assistant professor of law, Harvard University, served as moderator. The panelists spoke on the history of the South, slavery, Reconstruction and Robert Penn Warren’s reflections on the war during the symposium taped for this one-hour program. The program will air on the following dates and times (Eastern): Tuesday, September 20, 9 p.m. (KETKY) Thursday, September 22, 4 a.m. (KET) and 4 p.m. (KETKY) Saturday, September 24, noon (KETKY) Tuesday, October 11, 11 a.m. and 10 p.m. (KETKY) Saturday, October 15, noon (KETKY) The symposium was held April 28 in Haggin Auditorium as part of the festivities surrounding the inauguration of R. Owen Williams as Transylvania’s 25th president. A DVD of the KET special can be ordered here, by clicking on “Miscellaneous Conferences” on the menu on the left, then selecting “Civil War DVD.” DVDs are $12 each. A promo of the

Read ““The Civil War and Reconstruction in the Border States: History and Memory at the Sesquicentennial” premieres on KET through Sept. 24 and Oct. 11-15”

LEXINGTON, KY.—Transylvania University launches a new lecture series, the John Marshall Harlan Series, with a talk by legal and constitutional historian William Wiecek on Monday, September 26th, at 7:30 p.m. in Carrick Theater in the Mitchell Fine Arts Center. The lecture, “John Marshall Harlan, Race, and the United States Supreme Court,” is free and open to the public. “We created this lecture series to bring to campus highly esteemed legal figures of national or international prominence who have distinguished themselves in constitutional law or history,” said Transylvania President R. Owen Williams. “We are delighted to have William Wiecek as our first speaker.” Wiecek is currently serving as the Lassiter Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Kentucky Law School. He is the author of numerous books. His most recent, “The Birth of the Modern Constitution: The United States Supreme Court, 1941–1953” (volume 12 of the Holmes Devise History of the Supreme Court of the United States), won the John Phillip Reid Prize awarded by the American Society for Legal History for the best book in legal history published in 2006. Harlan, an associate justice on the U.S. Supreme Court from 1877-1911, was a Kentucky lawyer and politician and an 1852 graduate of Transylvania’s law department. An early champion of civil rights, he is most notable as the lone dissenter in the Civil Rights Cases (1883) and Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), which, respectively, struck down as unconstitutional federal anti-discrimination legislation and

Read “Transylvania University’s new John Marshall Harlan Lecture Series presents legal and constitutional historian William Wiecek, September 26, at 7:30 p.m.; free and open to the public”