Location
Webinar Waiting Room Opens at 7:15 pm with music and video introduction, Program Begins at 7:30 pm
Registration Required Below
The Mark Twain Library and the Redding League of Women Voters are proud to present the second installment of our series “Conversations: Truth, Myth & Democracy” with Dr. Ty Seidule of Hamilton College and Dr. Charles Dew of Williams College, moderated by Western Connecticut State University’s Dr. Daniel Barrett. This virtual discussion is between two Civil War historians who grew up in the South and whose research took them both to some very personal revelations about their own beliefs. Those revelations are the subject of their books and of our conversation. The Conversations series is a grassroots effort that continues to examine the underlying meaning of our democracy and how democracy matters even when we have very different ideas about what it should look like.
This particular program is the second in a series that focuses on addressing the difficult issues of truth telling and myth busting within our democracy by bringing much-needed community conversations to help promote education, informed dialogue and civil discourse. The series is brought to you in association with Easton Public Library, Weston Public Library, Friends of the Weston Public Library, Newtown’s C.H. Booth Library, Ridgefield Library, The League of Women Voters of Weston, The League of Women Voters of Ridgefield and The League of Women Voters of Northern Fairfield County.
You can purchase either memoir at our two local bookstores: Byrd’s Books in Bethel and Books on the Common in Ridgefield. If you would like a signed bookplate inside the cover of Robert E Lee and Me, contact each store directly via phone or email.
Registration is required for this free virtual program. Registered participants will receive a Zoom invitation on the day of the program. If you include your cell phone number on the registration form, you will receive one text reminder, with Zoom link, 15-30 minutes before the program begins. Webinar waiting room opens at 7:00 pm and program begins at 7:30 pm
There will be time for questions during the webinar but you are also welcome to submit you questions to our speakers in advance. Click here to submit.
About our presenters:
Dr. Charles Dew is the Ephraim Williams Professor of American History at Williams College. A native of St. Petersburg, Florida, he attended Williams College prior to completing his Ph.D. degree at the Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of the Fletcher Pratt Award-winning Apostles of Disunion: Southern Secession Commissioners and the Causes of the Civil War (Virginia); Bond of Iron: Master and Slave at Buffalo Forge, selected as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year; and his 2016 memoir, The Making of a Racist: A Southerner Reflects on Family, History, and the Slave Trade.
Dr. Ty Seidule is the Chamberlain Fellow and visiting professor of history at Hamilton College and a professor emeritus at West Point. A recently retired Brigadier General who served more than three decades in the U.S. Army, he graduated from Washington and Lee and holds a Ph.D. from the Ohio State University. Seidule co-edited the award-winning West Point History of Warfare. His recent book Robert E. Lee and Me: A Southerner’s Reckoning with the Myth of the Lost Cause was published in 2021.
Dr. Daniel W. Barrett is a Professor and Chair in the Department of Psychology at Western Connecticut State University. He graduated with a BA from Wesleyan University, earned his Ph.D. in Social Psychology from Arizona State University and served as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Health Communication at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Barrett is author of the 2016 textbook, Social Psychology: Core Concepts and Emerging Trends. His research interests include suspicion, persuasion, social influence, and cross-cultural psychology. He lives here in Redding, CT.
