Peter Kastor, Ph.D., assistant professor of history and of American Culture Studies, both in Arts & Sciences, and a 2006 Faculty Fellow, will speak on “An Accurate Empire: How American Explorers Described Their Country and Themselves” at 4 p.m. March 9 in Anheuser-Busch Hall, Room 305.
Kastor is the third of six speakers appearing this spring as part of the Faculty Fellows Lecture and Workshop Series, presented by The Center for the Humanities in Arts & Sciences.
His talk will center on the explorers dispatched to survey the North American West during the first two decades of the 19th century. Kastor will address developments in print, visual and political culture that informed the way these explorers attempted to describe what they saw in words and in pictures.
Kastor earned a doctorate from the University of Virginia in 1999, specializing in the early American republic and related fields. He is the author of The Nation’s Crucible: The Louisiana Purchase and the Creation of America (2004) and the editor of The Louisiana Purchase: Emergence of an American Nation (2002).
The event is free and open to the public. For seat reservations or more information, call 935-5576.