Contact: Kenneth Billings
STARKVILLE, Miss.--A foremost Civil War historian and a Mississippi State doctoral candidate from Rankin County are guest speakers March 24 for the university's 2010 John F. and Jeanne A. Marszalek Lecture Series.
William C. "Jack" Davis, director of programs at the Virginia Center for Civil War Studies and history professor at Virginia Tech University, will be featured. "General Grant's Grandson and the Awakening of a Historian" will be his topic.
The free public program begins at 2 p.m. in the John Grisham Room of Mitchell Memorial Library. A reception and book signing for Davis follows at the location.
"We are fortunate to have a Civil War historian with the national reputation Jack Davis has," Marszalek said. "He is, indeed, one of the major authors and authorities on this very important area of American history."
Also speaking will be history graduate student James S. Kinsey of Richland. "Lost Limbs and Livelihood in the Mississippi Hill Country: Disabled Confederate Veterans and Their Families in Rural Communities, 1863-1890" will be his topic.
Davis, who holds degrees from California's Sonoma State College (now University), is recognized nationally as a preeminent Civil War authority. Featured regularly on various History Channel programs, he is the author of more than 50 books and numerous documentary screenplays.
A former National Historical Society president, he has served as a consultant for several television and film productions, including "The Blue and the Gray," "North and South," "George Washington," and "The Perfect Tribute."
Davis is a three-time winner of the Jefferson Davis Award given for book-length works on Confederate history. His most recent release is "The Pirates Laffite: The Treacherous World of the Corsairs of the Gulf" (Harcourt, 2005). [For more biographical information, visit www.history.vt.edu/Davis/.]
Kinsey holds a bachelor's degree in social welfare from the University of Arkansas and a master's in history from Jackson State University.
The Marszalek Library Fund and Lecture Series was established in 2002 by MSU history professor emeritus John Marszalek and wife Jeanne, in collaboration with the MSU Libraries, to encourage use of primary source materials related to American history, the Civil War and Reconstruction, Jacksonian America, and race relations.
For more information on the Marszalek Lecture Series and upcoming program, visit http://library.msstate.edu/content/templates/?a=580.
For more information about Mississippi State University, see http://www.msstate.edu/.