Roberts Batson:
Amazing Place, This New Orleans
The popular New Orleans actor and author returns to Fanfare with the post-Katrina version of his critically acclaimed one-man show, featuring his colorful alter-ego, Beauregard Claiborne ("Trey") Ellis III. Batson’s “pre-Katrina” version of "Amazing Place” was a huge hit at Fanfare 2003. Adapted from his “Louisiana Scandals Tour,” a walking tour of the French Quarter created in 1997 and filmed for worldwide broadcast by the British Broadcasting Corporation, “Amazing Place” is an entertaining way to learn about New Orleans history.
Free

* Then and Now Lecture
Chris Rose:
1 Dead in Attic -- Post-Katrina Stories
The Times-Picayune’s Chris Rose was a finalist for the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for commentary for his “vibrant and compassionate columns that gave voice to the afflictions of his city after it was struck by Hurricane Katrina.” His accounts of the first four months in New Orleans “after The Thing” have been collected in 1 Dead in Attic, which Amazon.com said, “freeze frames New Orleans caught between an old era and a new, New Orleans in its most desperate time, as it struggled out of floodwaters and willed itself back to life in the autumn and early winter of 2005.” A booksigning will follow the lecture.
Free

* The Then and Now Lecture Series, sponsored by the Department of History and Political Science, is dedicated to Donald G. Rhodes, retired associate professor of government. A member of the Southeastern faculty for more than three decades, he will be honored at today’s lecture. His legacy at Southeastern includes not only multiple generations of his students who have gone on to success in law, politics, and other fields, but also those who continue to be influenced by the stamp he left on our university.

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October 9

Fanfare Headliner
Author John Barry
Fanfare’s headline speaker, John M. Barry is a prize-winning and New York Times best-selling author of five books, including The Great Influenza and Rising Tide, a stellar history of the 1927 flood which bears remarkable parallels in post-Katrina Louisiana. Barry has appeared on Meet the Press, along with all four major television networks, cable news, PBS, NPR, and the BBC. He has contributed to award-winning television documentaries, and written for Sports Illustrated, The New York Times Sunday Magazine, Fortune, Time, Newsweek, Esquire, and The Washington Post. 

$12, adults; $10 srs/fac/staff/alumni, $8 group rate; $5, non-Southeastern students; Southeastern students free with I.D.

Sponsored by Anderson & Boutwell Law Firm; Terry & Pam King; Phil & Ann Livingston/Sanderson Farms; Ross Downing Chevrolet; Your Bank; Southeastern Arts & Lectures Committee, College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, Department of History and Political Science, Student Government Association.

October 11

Then and Now Lecture
Margaret Gonzalez-Perez:
History Goes to the Movies, Episode Six: Reel Arabs 
Southeastern's international relations specialist and author of a forthcoming study of women terrorists continues the perennially popular series on history and politics in the movies, examining stereotypes of Arabs found in modern popular film, the origin of these stereotypes, and how they have changed since September 11, 2001. 
Free 

Then and Now Lecture
Michael Kurtz:
Presumed Guilty -- Bruno Richard Hauptmann and the Lindbergh Kidnapping Case 
Southeastern's nationally recognized historian of crime details one of the 20th century's most controversial cases, the 1932 kidnapping and murder of Charles Lindbergh's 18-month old son. Kurtz will discuss the controversial arrest, trial, conviction, and execution of Bruno Richard Hauptmann, detailing how authorities falsified evidence and manipulated facts to secure a conviction against a German immigrant at worst guilty of extortion. Was Hauptmann made a sacrificial lamb to close a high profile, politically motivated case?
Free 

Judge Leon Ford Lecture in History
John Boles: 
Climate, Geography, and Southern History: The Influence of Non-Human Factors
John Boles, William Pettus Hobby Professor of History at Rice University, examines the shaping role of large, impersonal forces in southern history. His talk deals not only with global factors such as climate and geography, but also with local environmental factors from the honeybee and boll weevil to the mosquito and cattle tick. “Human action always occurs in an environmental context,” says Boles. “It is important in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina to consider the synergistic relationship between nature and human history.”
Free

Sponsored by the Ford Family Charitable Foundation

October 25

Then and Now Lecture
Peter Petrakis:
All Too Visible -- Politics and Art in Ralph Ellison and Albert Camus
Southeastern's political theorist, long interested in the uneasy relationship between art and politics, notes that art is dangerous, as Plato's expulsion of the poets in The Republic long ago made clear. The editor of Eric Voegelin's Dialogue with the Postmoderns and author of several articles on art and politics offers his latest analysis of "dangerous" art, which examines the politicization of two of the 20th century's foremost novelists.
Free 

Then and Now Lecture
William Robison: 
The History of Frankenstein -- From Mary Shelley to Boris Karloff to Mel Brooks and Beyond
Fanfare’s More-or-Less Annual Halloween Lecture returns with the usual mix of scholarship, silliness, surprises, and sweets as the “Undead Head” of the Department of History and Political Science discusses the history of the Frankenstein monster in literature, movies, and popular culture. Are the rumors true that this historian and amateur mad scientist will reanimate a body onstage? The only way to find out is to be there! (And remember, costumes are encouraged!)
Free