The Art of Being Free - Keynote Speakers

Documentary Filmmaker Ken Burns Presents: Telling the American Stories

September 30, 2008
7 p.m.
Massey Performing Arts Center (MPAC)
Ken Burns has been making documentary films for more than 30 years. Since the Academy Award-nominated Brooklyn Bridge in 1981, he has gone on to direct and produce some of the most acclaimed historical documentaries ever made. Stephen Ambrose, the historian, has said of Burns' films, "More Americans get their history from Ken Burns than any other source." Burns will address his approach to "history" and his perspective on the American experience and on the following day will answer questions from students in a Q-and-A session.

First Year Seminar Speaker James Loewen: Lies My Teachers Told Me

October 28, 2008
10 a.m.
Massey Performing Arts Center (MPAC)
James Loewen wrote the best-selling Lies My Teachers Told Me: Everything Your High School History Textbook Got Wrong, in part a critique of existing textbooks, but also an account of American history as it should be taught. His most recent book is Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism. His other books include Lies Across America: What Our Historic Markers and Monuments Get Wrong; The Truth About Columbus; and Mississippi: Conflict and Change, which won the Lillian Smith Award for Best Southern Nonfiction.

Historian David McCullough Presents: Leadership and the History You Don’t Know

March 30, 2009
7 p.m.
Curb Event Center
Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and New York Times’ best-selling author David McCullough will appear at Belmont University on March 30 as the official conclusion of the year-long campus celebration of the 2008 Town Hall Presidential Debate. McCullough received a bachelor’s in English literature from Yale University in 1955, and has since been awarded more than 40 honorary degrees. He has twice received the Pulitzer Prize, for Truman and John Adams, and twice received the National Book Award, for The Path Between the Seas and Mornings on Horseback. His other widely praised books are 1776, Brave Companions, The Great Bridge and The Johnstown Flood. He has been honored with the National Book Foundation Distinguished Contribution to American Letters Award, the National Humanities Medal and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.