The History Department is proud to announce that this year’s Gary and Eleanor Simons Lecture will be on Thursday, 22 March 2018 at 5:30 in Smathers 100. Dr. Joseph Crespino of the Emory University History Department will give a talk entitled, “Searching for Atticus Finch: Harper Lee & American History.”
Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird is one of the most beloved novels in American literature, and its hero, Atticus Finch, has long been considered a touchstone of decency and probity. Yet the publication of her apprentice novel, Go Set a Watchman, in 2015 has muddied the waters of Lee’s literary legacy. Dr. Crespino has uncovered new archival sources that shed important light on not only how Lee’s relationship with her father inspired the paradoxical characterizations of Atticus that emerged in her two novels, but also the personal and political battles that shaped the lives of white southerners in the closing decades of the Jim Crow South.
This talk is free and open to the public.