The Lee Chapel Spring Lecture Presents Professor Andrew Levy
The Lee Chapel Spring Lecture will be held at Washington and Lee University on March 29 from 12-1 p.m. in Lee Chapel Auditorium. Speaking will be Dr. Andrew Levy, the Edna Cooper Chair in English at Butler University and author of the award-winning biography, “The First Emancipator” (2005).
The title of Levy’s talk, which is free and open to the public, is “Slavery, Religion and the Quiet Revolution of Robert Carter III.”
“In 1791, Robert Carter III, a pillar of Virginia’s Colonial aristocracy, broke with his peers by arranging the freedom of his nearly five hundred slaves,” said Levy. “It would be the largest single act of liberation in the history of American slavery before the Emancipation Proclamation.
“Despite this courageous move—or perhaps because of it—Carter’s name has all but vanished from the annals of American history. In this talk, Levy will explore the confluence of circumstance, conviction, war and emotion that led to Carter’s extraordinary act.”
Levy’s “The First Emancipator” won the Virginia Historical Society’s Slatten Prize for biography. Levy is also the author of “A Brain Wider Than The Sky: A Migraine Diary” (2009). He is co-editor of the “Norton Anthology of Postmodern American Fiction” (1997) and co-author of the textbook “Creating Fiction: A Writer’s Companion” (1995).
His essays and reviews have appeared in Best American Essays, Harper’s, the American Scholar, Chicago Tribune and elsewhere.
Levy is co-director of the Writers’ Studio and he has been at Butler University since 1992. He teaches courses in a range of American literary topics, including African American and Native American literature as well as creative writing and freshman English.
