This William B. Crawley Great Lives Lecture Series is open to the public free of charge and no admission tickets are required.
Lectures begin at 7:30 p.m. in Dodd Auditorium, George Washington Hall, on the Fredericksburg campus of the University of Mary Washington. The auditorium opens at 6:30 p.m.
Video recordings of the lectures will be uploaded to the UMW Great Lives Lectures website and will be available in the weeks following the live lectures.
CRRL librarians have hand-picked titles to accompany each lecture. All photos used below are from biography.com and Encyclopedia Britannica.
Alan Turing
Mathematician
January 19
Speaker: David Leavitt
Book: The Man Who Knew Too Much: Alan Turing and the Invention of the Computer
Shirley Jackson
Horror & Mystery Writer
January 24
Speaker: Ruth Franklin
Book: Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life
Thomas Paine
American Political Activist
January 26
Speaker: Craig Nelson
Book: Thomas Paine: Enlightenment, Revolution, and the Birth of Modern Nations
Gladys West
Technology Pioneer
February 2
Speaker: Karen Sherry
Panelists: Carolyn West Oglesby, Alan Dean, and Marvin Jackson
Book: It Began With A Dream
Fannie Lou Hamer
Civil Rights Activist
February 7
Speaker: Kate Clifford Larson
Book: Walk With Me: A Biography of Fannie Lou Hamer
Ted Kennedy
Lawyer and Politician
February 14
Speaker: John A. Farrell
Book: Ted Kennedy: A Life
J. Edgar Hoover
First Director of the F.B.I
February 16
Speaker: Beverly Gage
Book: G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century
Ferdinand Magellan
Portuguese Explorer
March 2
Speaker: Laurence Bergreen
Book: Over the Edge of the World: Magellan’s Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe
Sandra Day O’Connor
First Female Associate Justice
March 7
Speaker: Evan Thomas
Book: First
The Transcendentalists
Corrupt Purity of the Individual
March 7
Speaker: Robert A. Gross
Book: The Transcendentalists and Their World
Anne Frank
A Documented Life
March 14
Speaker: Rosemary Sullivan
Book: The Betrayal of Anne Frank: A Cold Case Investigation
Marquis de Lafayette
French Noble
March 16
Speaker: Mike Duncan
Book: Hero of Two Worlds: The Marquis de Lafayette in the Age of Revolution
Queen Isabella
The Warrior Queen
March 21
Speaker: Kirstin Downey
Book: Isabella: The Warrior Queen
Bruce Springsteen
American Rock Legend
March 23
Speaker: Peter Ames Carlin
Book: Bruce
Colin Powell
U.S. General and Statesman
March 28
Speaker: Karen DeYoung
Book: SOLDIER: The Life of Colin Powell
