In support of Global Initiative: Africa, a collaborative presentation of Cultural Affairs and Global Studies is being given by SUNY Orange instructor of history, Greg Geddes. Entitled Harvey Swados, Chinua Achebe, and the Nigerian-Biafran War, the lecture is scheduled at 7pm on Tuesday, October 22, 2013 in the Great Room, Kaplan Hall 101 on the Newburgh campus of SUNY Orange located at the corner of Grand and First Streets. Dr. Geddes will examine and discuss the travels of Harvey Swados to Biafra in the 1960s and his concerns for the Ibo people and the fate of writers and intellectuals there during the Nigerian-Biafran War. It was during this time that Swados met and befriended Chinua Achebe who was a member of the Ibo nation of southeastern Nigeria and the author who became the towering man of letters whose internationally acclaimed fiction helped to revive African literature. Harvey Swados was an independent, mid-20th century American social critic and leftist author of novels, short stories, essays, and journalism. Greg Geddes holds a BA in History and English Literature from the College of William & Mary. Subsequently, he studied American labor history under Mel Dubofsky at SUNY Binghamton, where Geddes earned a PhD in US History. His dissertation, which won the Distinguished Dissertation Award for the Social Sciences, is an intellectual biography of Harvey Swados. At SUNY Orange he has taught American History, the Age of Revolutions, and Medieval and Renaissance History. He has also developed courses. He has written on topics such as the socialist congressman Victor Berger, Robert F. Kennedy, the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, the novelist Alice McDermott, and the NAACP. He has presented his work at the Organization of American Historians, the Social Science History Association, the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library, and the North American Labor History Conference. In the spring of 2012 he served as a panelist on the Civility and Democracy series at the FDR Library sponsored by the New York Council on the Humanities. This event is free and open to the public. Free, secure parking is available in the Kaplan Hall underground parking garage accessible via First Street. For more information, contact Cultural Affairs at (845) 341-9386 or [email protected] Check out sunyorange.edu/culturalaffairs
Posted on: Fri, 18 Oct 2013 13:13:03 +0000
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