November 21, 2024

EagleEye

A Newsletter for UMW Faculty and Staff

UMW’s Great Lives Lecture Series Announces 2025 Lineup, New Director

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Distinguished Professor Emeritus Bill Crawley (left) and UMW Museums Executive Director Scott Harris ’83 have served as co-directors of the William B. Crawley Great Lives Lecture Series for the past year. On Tuesday, Crawley announced his retirement. Harris, his former student at Mary Washington, will oversee the Great Lives Lecture Series. Photo by Karen Pearlman.

Distinguished Professor Emeritus Bill Crawley (left) and UMW Museums Executive Director Scott Harris ’83 have served as co-directors of the William B. Crawley Great Lives Lecture Series for the past year. Photo by Karen Pearlman.

A selection of fascinating figures will be profiled during this year’s William B. Crawley Great Lives Lecture Series at the University of Mary Washington. The 22nd season of the popular series was announced Tuesday evening at a presentation that welcomed over 160 supporters, donors and sponsors to UMW’s Jepson Alumni Executive Center.

This year, bestselling biographers will shine a light on senator and civil rights leader John Lewis, broadcast journalist Barbara Walters, controversial baseball great Pete Rose, Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull, and over a dozen other notable individuals from history and culture.

Yet, of all the larger-than-life personalities highlighted on Nov. 12, the one that drew the most applause was series founder and Distinguished Professor Emeritus of History William Crawley, who announced his retirement. His co-director, Scott Harris ’83, executive director of UMW Museums, will oversee the series – the latest installment of which starts on Jan. 21, 2025 – moving forward. Read more.

Crawley Talks About ‘Great Lives’ With Fredericksburg Tourism

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Distinguished Professor of History Emeritus Bill Crawley

Distinguished Professor of History Emeritus Bill Crawley

Distinguished Professor of History Emeritus William B. Crawley spoke to City of Fredericksburg Economic Development and Tourism Director Bill Freehling for a recent episode of Freehling Finds, exploring the people, places and events that make Fredericksburg shine. During the segment, titled “UMW Great Lives Lecture Series celebrates its 20th Season,” Bill Crawley takes the stage at Dodd Auditorium to talk about how the Great Lives Lecture Series got its start. Watch the clip.

Bales Continues Research and Writing in Retirement

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Reference and Humanities Librarian Emeritus Jack Bales

Reference and Humanities Librarian Emeritus Jack Bales

Jack Bales, Reference and Humanities Librarian Emeritus, has been keeping busy since he retired last August after more than 40 years at the UMW Library. His article, “‘He will do just what is best, no doubt’: William Hulbert’s Calculated Dismantling of the Chicago Base Ball Association,” was published in Base Ball 12: New Research on the Early Game (2021). Using original documents and primary sources such as the baseball club’s 1876 corporate charter, newspaper articles, and Hulbert’s letters and business records, the author details how the baseball club president shut down the Chicago Base Ball Association and, in so doing, disenfranchised many of its investors so he could form the new Chicago Ball Club. Base Ball is an annual peer-reviewed book series that promotes the study of the sport’s early history by publishing original research and analysis. Bales will discuss his work at the eleventh annual Frederick Ivor-Campbell Nineteenth Century Base Ball Conference, to be held virtually from April 22–24. He will also participate in a panel discussion on Chicago baseball executive and National League President William Hulbert.

Bales’s latest book, The Chicago Cub Shot for Love: A Showgirl’s Crime of Passion and the 1932 World Series, is scheduled for publication on June 21 by The History Press of Charleston, South Carolina. Using books, newspaper articles, memoirs, interviews, court records, archival documents, and never-before-published photographs, the author traces the story of how a young Chicago woman unwittingly set in motion events that indirectly changed baseball history.

Bales spoke on the nineteenth-century children’s author Horatio Alger, Jr. in February for UMW’s William B. Crawley Great Lives Lecture Series. He has published many works on Alger over the years and will host the convention of the Horatio Alger Society, a book collectors’ organization, here in Fredericksburg from June 3–6.

‘Great Lives’ Lecture Series Kicks Off Jan. 19

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Great Lives banner

The “Great Lives” lecture series kicks off on Tuesday, Jan. 19 at 7:30 p.m. with a lecture on former Presidents James Monroe and George Washington, delivered by UMW Museums Executive Director Scott Harris. The Barlow & Thomas, P.C. Lecture.

Because of restrictions on public gatherings on campus, the entire series of 18 lectures will be pre-recorded and delivered electronically, through Zoom Webinars, with closed captioning available.

Although the presentations will be taped in advance, there will still be a live Q&A session following the online debut of each lecture, in which the speaker will be available to answer questions submitted by audience members.

Presidents George Washington and James Monroe are the subjects of the first "Great Lives" lecture on Jan. 19.

Presidents George Washington and James Monroe are the subjects of the first “Great Lives” lecture on Jan. 19.

From Revolutionary War battlefields to the arenas of American politics, George Washington and James Monroe navigated a complex relationship. Mutual regard and affection, born in the shared experience of fighting for the cause of independence, eroded steadily amid the early Republic’s changing political and diplomatic landscape. The resulting estrangement revealed much of the character of both men.

The emergence of Federalist and Republican factions during Washington’s presidential administration enflamed both domestic and foreign affairs. Monroe’s first diplomatic mission to France was a casualty of this partisan divide. His advocacy of Republican principles and the traditional alliance with France ran counter to the Federalists’ goal of improving relations with Great Britain. Recalled from his post in disgrace, Monroe aired his grievances with Washington publicly and received harsh criticism in return. The rift between the two men, personally distressing to both, was never repaired.

Or was it? Monroe’s presidency echoed symbols and values evident in that of Washington: popular tours of the country, efforts to mitigate party divisions, and a foreign policy aimed at insulating the United States from entanglements in European conflicts. Perhaps the Revolutionary Rift between George Washington and James Monroe was, in the end, healed.

The series continues on Thursday, Jan. 21 with a lecture on abolitionist Sojourner Truth by Professor of History Claudine Ferrell. The sPower Lecture.

Abolitionist Sojourner Truth is the subject of the "Great Lives" lecture on Jan. 21.

Abolitionist Sojourner Truth is the subject of the “Great Lives” lecture on Jan. 21.

Sojourner Truth began life in 1797 as a slave named Isabella in Ulster County, New York. After years of hard work and abuse, she ended her enslavement in late 1826. She then re-invented herself. The strikingly intelligent but illiterate young woman became an uncompromising abolitionist, a famed and witty speaker, a proponent of women’s rights, and an inspiring preacher. By the 1850s her Narrative of Sojourner Truth (1850) and Bible-inspired lectures made her name a familiar one throughout the northern states and in the nation’s newspapers. During her life, she used hard work, the speaker’s podium, the courts, and song as she fought against slavery and racial inequality and advocated for rights of women black and white. She won a legal action that freed her son, recruited black troops for the Union army, campaigned for temperance, and met with presidents. After the Civil War, she helped settle freed slaves, and even into her eighties, she worked to aid the migrant Exodusters in the 1870s. She died in 1883 in Battle Creek, Michigan, which honors her today with a massive statue that befits the six-foot-tall traveler for truth.

For more information and a full list of lectures, visit umw.edu/greatlives or contact the Office of University Events and Conferencing at 540-654-1065.

Great Lives Series Explores Perceptions of Past Presidents

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In the midst of 2020’s contentious presidential election season, most Americans are looking ahead – to Nov. 3 and beyond. In the meantime, UMW Professor Emeritus of History William B. Crawley is looking backward, serving up some snapshots of past presidents.

With the spring Great Lives series cut short by COVID-19, Crawley decided to videotape, starting in August, a mini-series of lectures about several U.S. presidents, the lives of whom he deems great, or at least notable – Thomas Jefferson, the two Roosevelts, Woodrow Wilson and Harry Truman.

The Great Presidential Lives mini-series of lectures by UMW Professor Emeritus of History William B. Crawley features videotaped lectures on Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Woodrow Wilson and John F. Kennedy.

The Great Presidential Lives mini-series of lectures by UMW Professor Emeritus of History William B. Crawley features videotaped lectures on Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Woodrow Wilson and John F. Kennedy.

 

The sixth and final lecture will be tomorrow: John F. Kennedy: “Camelot” and the Question of Style vs. Substance. The JFK lecture, as well as the other five – all approximately one hour – are available on the Great Lives website. Some of the lectures also are being rebroadcast as part of C-SPAN’s “The Presidency” series and will remain available on the UMW Page of the network’s free video library.

“I chose the six mainly because I’ve always found them to be especially interesting,” Crawley said. “Each was controversial in his own way in his own times and has continued to be the subject of changing historiographical interpretations over the years.” Read more.

Crawley Pens Commentary on Harry S. Truman for Great Presidential Lives

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Professor Emeritus of History William B. Crawley recently offered commentary in The Free Lance-Star on the life of Harry S. Truman as part of his virtual “Great Presidential Lives” series. The online series is available at https://www.umw.edu/greatlives/.

When Vice President Harry S. Truman learned of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s death on April 12, 1945, the realization that he would now be president made him feel, he told reporters, “like the moon, the stars, and all the planets had fallen on me.”

Truman had ample reason to be thunderstruck. And the American people generally shared his trepidation. They knew little about this successor to the legendary FDR, and what they did know was not reassuring.

For one thing, he had been vice president only during Roosevelt’s fourth term and thus in office for only a few months. His career prior to that was undistinguished, having held sundry jobs with indifferent success before winning election to the U.S. Senate in 1934.

Plain in both appearance and speech, he did not look or sound “presidential.” In short, few people have ever attained the presidency so seemingly ill-equipped for the job. Yet it was his fate to be faced with some of the most crucial problems of 20th century America. Read more.