The William B. Crawley Great Lives Lecture Series returns for its 17th season on Jan. 21, 2020, which also marks Professor Crawley’s 50th year on the UMW faculty.
The series is characterized by its breadth of topics and quality of speakers, who this season include Pulitzer Prize winners David Blight on Frederick Douglass and William Taubman on Nikita Khrushchev.
Several 2020 topics focus on groups of interesting people, including duelists, pirates, and female pioneers in aviation and the internet.
Great Lives lectures are free and open to the public. All begin at 7:30 p.m. in Dodd Auditorium, George Washington Hall. For information, call 540-654-1065 or visit
umw.edu/greatlives.
Calendar
Jan. 21
Ronald Reagan, Craig Shirley, author of Rendezvous with Destiny
Jan. 23 Tiger Woods, Jeff Benedict, author of Tiger Woods
Jan. 28 D-Day Girls, Sarah Rose, author of D-Day Girls
Jan. 30
JFK/James Bond, Steven Watts, author of JFK and the Masculine Mystique
Feb. 4
Francis Gary Powers, Francis Gary Powers Jr., author of Spy Pilot
Feb. 6 The Beach Boys, Peter Ames Carlin, author of Catch a Wave
Feb. 11 Dr. Seuss, Brian Jay Jones, author of Becoming Dr. Seuss
Feb. 13
John and John Quincy Adams, Nancy Isenberg and Andrew Burstein, authors of The Problem of Democracy
Feb. 18
Stephen Hawking, Kitty Ferguson, author of Stephen Hawking: An Unfettered Mind
Feb. 20 American Duelists, Joanne Freeman, author of Field of Blood
Feb. 27
Frederick Douglass, David W. Blight, author of Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom
March 10
Female Internet Inventors, Claire L. Evans, author of Broad Band
March 12
C.S. Lewis, Devin Brown, author of A Life Observed: A Spiritual Biography of
C.S. Lewis
March 19
America’s Notorious Pirates, Eric Jay Dolan, author of Black Flags, Blue Waters
March 24
Karl Marx, Jonathan Sperber, author of Karl Marx: A Nineteenth-Century Life
March 31
Hedy Lamarr, Stephen Michael Shearer, author of Beautiful: The Life of Hedy Lamarr
April 2
Sandra Day O’Connor, Evan Thomas, author of First: Sandra Day O’Connor
April 7
Nikita Khrushchev, William Taubman, author of Khrushchev: The Man and His Era
April 14 Pioneer Female Aviators, Keith O’Brien, author of Fly Girls