Distinguished Scholar Kathleen DuVal to Give Annual Tom Kennedy Endowed Lecture

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Professor Kathleen DuVal, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Kathleen DuVal, professor of history at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, will give this year's Thomas P. Kennedy Lecture at 5 p.m. Tuesday, March 12, in Giffels Auditorium, Old Main. A reception will follow. The lecture is open to the public.

DuVal's work in the early social, cultural and political history of the American colonies has reached a wide audience and stimulated new ways of thinking about the indigenous history of the American South. Her first book, Native Ground: Indians and Colonists in the Heart of the Continent, compelled historians to recognize the influence exercised by Native Americans along the lower Mississippi River Valley. Rather than being quickly swept aside by Europeans, they dictated terms and defined boundaries. The French in Arkansas, for example, adopted the patterns of land use, dress, language and culture from the Quapaw. 

Since the publication of her first book, DuVal has published two more, one an edited volume with John DuVal of the U of A, and another, a monograph on Native Americans and the American Revolution, Independence Lost: Lives on the Edge of the American Revolution. She is also co-author of one of the most distinguished textbooks in American history: Give Me Liberty with Eric Foner and Lisa McGirr. Her Kennedy lecture will provide a glimpse into her forthcoming Native Nations: A Millenium in North America. It is described as a "magisterial history of Indigenous North America that places the power of Native nations at its center, telling their story from the rise of ancient cities more than a thousand years ago to fights for sovereignty that continue today." 

DuVal is the winner of a Guggenheim Fellowship in the Humanities, a National Humanities Center Fellowship and a postdoctoral fellowship from the Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship. She has won many prizes for articles and books, including one from the Journal of the American Revolution and another from the American Antiquarian Society.

About the Kennedy Lecture: The Kennedy Lecture is dedicated to the memory of one of the Department of History's most beloved faculty members, Thomas C. Kennedy. He taught British history for more than 40 years, from 1967 to his retirement in 2003. He continued to write and participate in departmental events until his death in 2017. He published many scholarly articles and books and was an active participant in historical societies like the Western Conference on British Studies, and he served as president of the Friends Historical Society in London. He was appointed a T. Wister Brown Fellow at Haverford College and held a fellowship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge. He may be most remembered for the annual St. Patrick's Day parties he gave, which became a tradition not only for the department but for many in the Fayetteville community who came to know and love him. After he passed away, his colleagues, friends and former students created an endowed fund to honor his memory. Each year a distinguished scholar is invited to deliver the endowed Kennedy Lecture.