The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) announced today that President Drew Faust will deliver the 2011 Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities on May 2, in Washington, D.C. NEH's announcement notes that the annual lecture is the most prestigious honor the federal government confers for distinguished intellectual achievement in the humanities. Faust will speak at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Her lecture, titled "Telling War Stories: Reflections of a Civil War Historian," is to address representations of war throughout history. Faust's most recent book, This Republic of Suffering (read an excerpt here), on the death toll of the Civil War and its impact on Americans' lives and culture, was awarded the Bancroft Prize in 2009 and was a finalist for the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize.
Past Jefferson Lecturers have included Adams University Professor emeritus Bernard Bailyn (1998, "To Begin the World Anew: Politics and the Creative Imagination"); Fletcher University Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. (2002, "Mr. Jefferson and the Trials of Phillis Wheatley"); Porter University Professor Helen Vendler (2004, "The Ocean, the Bird, and the Scholar"); and Kenan professor of government Harvey Mansfield (2007, "How to Understand Politics: What the Humanities Can Say to Science"). The late Paul A. Freund, then Loeb University Professor, was the lecturer in 1975, and Gerald Holton, Mallinckrodt professor of physics and professor of the history of science emeritus, was honored in 1981.
The NEH announcement contains a link for submitting requests for tickets to attend the lecture.
