GCC History Club Announces the Historical Horizons Lecture Series Lineup for the Spring 2023 Semester

Batavia, NY (01/10/2023) — The Genesee Community College History Club is excited to announce the Historical Horizons Lecture Series schedule for the Spring 2023 semester. The series will kick off Wednesday, February 1, 2023, with Dr. Nicole Eustace discussing: Murder and Mercy on the Susquehanna: Captain Civility of Conestoga Teaches Pennsylvania Colonists Native Principles of Justice.

When a pair of colonial Pennsylvania fur traders fought with a Native American hunter and left him for dead in 1722, rival investigations by Indigenous leaders of multiple Native nations, colonial officials from several colonies and members of the British Board of Trade resulted in fierce debates about the true nature of justice. While settler colonists immediately jailed the accused killers and argued in favor of capital punishment in the case of conviction, Native spokespeople advocated a diametrically opposed approach. The leading local diplomat, a Susquehannock man named Taquatarensaly (who was known to colonists as "Captain Civility") urged compensation and condolences for the victim's friends and kin and clemency for the accused. The murdered man's kin among the Haudenosaunee Confederacy agreed with this approach as did his Shawnee widow and leaders of her community. In an era when Native nations remained powerful forces in colonial affairs, Captain Civility's position won. Indigenous peoples and settler colonists' rival ideas on how to manage the aftermath of murder have much to teach us today. Whereas settler colonists confronting criminal offences emphasized legal retribution against individuals, Indigenous peoples believed in economic restitution, emotional reconciliation, and social reintegration of the whole community.

Nicole Eustace is professor of history at New York University. She is the author of Covered with Night: A Story of Murder and Indigenous Justice in Early America, winner of the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in history, the Francis Parkman Prize and a finalist for the National Book Award for Nonfiction.

Wednesday, March 1

Marching Home: Union Veterans and Their Unending Civil War

Dr. Brian Matthew Jordan

A groundbreaking investigation examining the fate of Union veterans who won the war but couldn't bear the peace. For well over a century, traditional Civil War histories have concluded in 1865, with a bitterly won peace and Union soldiers returning triumphantly home. In a landmark work that challenges sterilized portraits accepted for generations, Civil War historian Brian Matthew Jordan creates an entirely new narrative. These veterans tending rotting wounds, battling alcoholism, campaigning for paltry pensions tragically realized that they stood as unwelcome reminders to a new America eager to heal, forget and embrace the freewheeling bounty of the Gilded Age.

Dr. Brian Matthew Jordan is an Assistant Professor of History and Director of Graduate Studies in History at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas, where he teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on the American Civil War, Reconstruction, and the philosophy of history. Marching Home received the Governor John Andrew Award of the Union Club of Boston and was a finalist for the 2016 Pulitzer Prize in History.

Wednesday, April 19

The Wedding of the Waters and Grand Celebration of the Opening of the Erie Canal: the history of ritual and the ritual of history.

Dr. Marla Segol and Historian, Dan Hamner

Nearly two hundred years ago, the Erie canal was opened with a fascinating month-long aquatic processional and series of celebrations led by a flotilla of barges, steam galleys and other boats who were met along the way by local parades, ceremonies, and fireworks, culminating in a "Wedding of the Waters." The ceremony mixed mythic imagery, masonic symbolism and a new vision of a prosperous American future. This lecture will explore the political purpose of the ritual, the elements of its performance, and how they worked together to transform people and place. Join University at Buffalo Professor and Scholar in Religious Studies Marla Segol and Historian and Genesee Community College Adjunct Professor of History Dan Hamner for a discussion of the "Wedding of the Waters," as they marry their own disciplines of history and religion for a deep dive into the importance and the meaning of this ritual.

Wednesday, May 3

Man of Fire: William Tecumseh Sherman in the Civil War

Associate Professor Derek D. Maxfield

He has been accused of "studied and ingenious cruelty." By turns he has been called a savior and a barbarian, a hero and a villain, a genius and a madman. But whatever you call William Tecumseh Sherman, you must admit he is utterly fascinating. Man of Fire: William Tecumseh Sherman in the Civil War tells the story of a man who found himself in war-and that, in turn, secured him a place in history. Condemned for his barbarousness or hailed for his heroics, the life of this peculiar general is nonetheless compelling-and thoroughly American. A brief book talk by Associate Professor Maxfield will be followed by a panel discussion with authors of the appendices of the book, including Jess Maxfield, Associate Professor Tracy Ford, and Associate Professor Michael Gosselin.

Derek Maxfield is an associate professor of history at Genesee Community College in Batavia, New York. Author of Hellmira: The Union's Most Infamous Civil War Prison Camp - Elmira, NY, Maxfield has written for Emerging Civil War since 2015. In 2019 he was honored with the SUNY Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Teaching and in 2013 he was awarded the SUNY Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activities.

All events begin at 7 p.m. and will be held in room T102 of the Conable Technology Building on the Batavia Campus. Events are FREE and open to the public.

For more information about the Historical Horizons Lecture Series, please contact Derek Maxfield at ddmaxfield@genesee.edu.

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Editor's Note:

A photograph of Dr. Nicole Eustace is available at:

https://marketing.genesee.edu/images/NicoleEustace.jpeg

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