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As part of the College’s yearlong celebration of the 250th anniversary of the Marquis de Lafayette’s birthday, Harlow G. Unger will visit campus to discuss his work on George Washington and the Marquis with students.
A veteran journalist, broadcaster, educator, and historian, Unger will discuss his work with students in the Sociology of Knowledge course, taught by Caroline Lee, assistant professor of anthropology and sociology. He also will visit the Reeder Fellows and McKelvy Scholars.
“[Students] are getting an awesome opportunity, in this and all the other 250th events that we will be taking advantage of,” says Lee. “The class is on the sociology of knowledge, as viewed through the lens of biography and life writing. I developed the idea for the course as a way of taking advantage of all the 250th activities when I heard about them this winter. My Introduction to American Studies students were very interested in the Marquis when we discussed him this spring, so I knew that there was student interest in the topic, which was why I organized the dinner for the scholars’ houses.”
Some of the major events during the celebration will include a lecture series, entitled Lives of Liberty, featuring renowned speakers; a historical exhibit at the Williams Center for the Arts, entitled A Son and his Adoptive Father: The Marquis de Lafayette and George Washington, and a birthday party.
Lee, whose academic specialty is political culture, first became interested in the story of the Marquis de Lafayette when she joined the faculty.
“I read the Lafayette biography when I got hired and fell in love with this strange character – a knight and a Mason and a French aristocrat and a populist and an American patriot,” explains Lee. “Lafayette has a personal role in a lot of the history that sociologists find particularly intriguing.”
In Sociology of Knowledge, students will examine the social creation and consequences of knowledge for social organization through the medium of biography. They will study George Washington, the Marquis de Lafayette, Charles Darwin, Martha Ballard, Rigoberta Menchú, Ignatius Sancho, and James Frey as case studies for social theorists. Class activities will emphasize the resources provided by the 250th anniversary celebration.
Unger will visit Lee’s class Oct. 2 for an in-class workshop on the practice of writing biographies of the Marquis and George Washington. He will discuss his methods of sourcing overlooked primary documents and organizing narratives and his philosophy behind his approach to biography and its evolution over the course of his career.
Unger also will participate in a dinner discussion with members of the Reeder Fellows program and McKelvy Scholars. Diane Shaw, special collections librarian and College archivist; Joe Shieber, assistant professor of philosophy and faculty adviser to McKelvy; and Lee also will attend.
Lee believes Unger’s visit to campus next semester will allow students a chance to interact with an expert biographer and ask questions about topics that are often glossed over in a public lecture. Unger last visited Lafayette in 2002, when he discussed and signed copies of his book Lafayette. His lecture on campus was broadcast to a national audience on C-SPAN2’s Book TV.
“Unger’s visit is an extraordinary opportunity for anthropology and sociology students to hear first-hand from an accomplished biographer about the art of biography – how archival records, life writing, and secondary sources get turned into definitive accounts of an individual’s life and its social context,” Lee says. “What gets included and what gets left out? How do you organize the messiness of a long and eventful life into a coherent narrative? Why do biographies take so long to write?
“The workshop format will allow students a chance to ask questions about Unger’s research methodologies and writing process. In particular, we will focus on Unger’s perspectives on the unique challenges of writing about an understudied figure like Lafayette versus a well-studied figure like Washington.”
Unger is the author of 15 books, including four biographies of America’s Founding Fathers: Noah Webster: The Life and Times of an American Patriot, John Hancock: Merchant King and American Patriot, Lafayette, and The Unexpected George Washington: His Private Life.
Cited by Florence King of the National Review as “America’s most readable historian,” he has appeared on the History Channel and C-SPAN’s Book Notes. Unger has spoken on numerous occasions at Mount Vernon, Valley Forge, Yorktown, Williamsburg, and historic sites in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. He was a featured speaker at the 225th anniversary of the Battle of Yorktown and at the Washington Symposium held at Mount Vernon.
Unger is a graduate of Yale University and has a master’s degree from California State University. He spent many years as a foreign correspondent and American affairs analyst from the New York Herald Tribune Overseas News Service, The Times, and The Sunday Times, and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. A former English and journalism professor, Unger is the author of the award-winning, three-volume Encyclopedia of American Education, a standard reference in academic and reference libraries.