Victoria E. Bynum, distinguished professor emeritus of history at Texas State University, will speak on her latest book, “The Long Shadow of the Civil War,” Wednesday, Oct. 10, at 7 p.m. in Jonasson Hall, lower level of Melrose Hall at Linfield College.
Her book is a series of uncommon narratives about common Southern men and women who did not fight for the Confederacy, but against it. It focuses on three Southern States, North Carolina, Mississippi and Texas and builds on her earlier book, “The Free State of Jones,” a work that has been optioned by a major Hollywood producer to be made into a film. Bynum’s lecture will seek to answer the extent of union support among common Southern folk during the war, how they fared and the legacies of the Civil War and the reconstruction for class and race relations then and now.
Bynum has a Ph.D. in American history from the University of California at San Diego. She spent most of her academic career at TSU. For the past 25 years, her research and teaching interests have centered on gender, class and race relations in the nineteenth-century U.S. South. She has been awarded numerous grants and fellowships and is the author of several scholarship articles and anthology essays. She is the author of two additional books, “The Free State of Jones: Mississippi’s Longest Civil War, and “Unruly Women: The Politics of Social and Sexual Control in the Old South.”
The lecture is free and open to the public and sponsored by the Jonas A. “Steine” Jonasson Endowed Lecture that honors Jonasson, professor emeritus of history, who was associated with Linfield for more than 60 years before his death in 1997. The endowment is used to bring in distinguished scholars and speakers in the area of history. Jonasson held the unofficial title of Linfield historian and wrote “Bricks Without Straw,” a history of the college.
For more information, contact Peter Buckingham, 503-883-2479, pbucking@linfield.edu.
