Lectures

Love history and want to learn more? Explore a variety of historical topics as authors, scholars, and local historians present the latest research and books, as well as new looks at old subjects. Lectures are open to the public and are free of charge unless otherwise stated.

Previous Lectures

  • @ East Tennessee History Center
    February 24, 2016 - 7:00am to February 25, 2016 - 7:45am

    Stephen Wicks, curator at the Knoxville Museum of Art, will explore the legacy of painter Beauford Delaney, one of the country’s most significant African American modernists. Born in Knoxville in 1901, Delaney went from sketching on Sunday school cards to formal lessons with Knoxville’s Lloyd Branson to joining the artistic revolution in Harlem...

  • @ East Tennessee History Center
    February 10, 2016 - 6:30am to 7:30am

    Following the Civil War, the rugged upcountry of Breathitt County, Kentucky, developed the reputation as “the darkest and bloodiest of all the dark and bloody feud counties.”  In a Brown Bag Lecture on February 10, Dr. T. R. C. Hutton will discuss his book Bloody Breathitt: Politics and Violence in the Appalachian South and argue that...

  • @ East Tennessee History Center
    January 30, 2016 - 5:00am to January 31, 2016 - 8:45am

    Do you own a work of art by Knoxville artist Lloyd Branson? If so, the East Tennessee Historical Society would like to know about it.

    In the decades after the Civil War, Lloyd Branson rose from a precocious sketcher on his family’s East Tennessee farm to become an accomplished artist and Knoxville’s most popular portraitist. He won...

  • @ East Tennessee History Center
    January 13, 2016 - 7:00am to January 14, 2016 - 7:45am

    In the decades after the Civil War, Lloyd Branson rose from a precocious sketcher on his family’s East Tennessee farm to become an accomplished artist and Knoxville’s most popular portraitist. He is now the subject of a major ETHS exhibition featuring an unprecedented gathering of more than 40 paintings highlighting the ambitions and...

  • Encampment from 10 a.m.-4 p.m., Lecture at noon
    January 8, 2016 - 7:00am to January 9, 2016 - 7:45am

    In cooperation with Fort Loudoun State Historic Area and the Tennessee Great War Commission, the East Tennessee Historical Society will be commemorating East Tennessee’s contributions to the First World War on Friday, January 8, with a lecture and living history encampment. At noon in the East Tennessee History Center auditorium, National Guard...

  • @ East Tennessee History Center
    November 19, 2015 - 7:00am to November 20, 2015 - 7:45am

    The great-granddaughter of famed author Frances Hodgson Burnett, author of Little Lord Fauntleroy, The Secret Garden, and numerous other well-known works, will be at the East Tennessee History Center at noon, Thursday, November 19, to speak about the life and career of her gifted ancestor.  The visit marks the 150th...

  • @ East Tennessee History Center
    November 10, 2015 - 7:00am to November 11, 2015 - 7:45am

    Celebrated author David Madden will talk about his new book, The Tangled Web of the Civil War and Reconstruction: Readings and Writings from a Novelist’s Perspective.  Madden’s new book highlights the interconnectedness of fiction and nonfiction by placing essays reflecting on the work of James McPherson, William Faulkner, and others...

  • @ East Tennessee History Center
    October 29, 2015 - 12:00pm to 2:30pm

    Edward T. Sanford was a Knoxville native and University of Tennessee alumnus who served as Eastern District of Tennessee Judge and Associate U.S. Supreme Court Justice.  John Scheb will tell us about Sanford’s remarkable life.  He was a civic leader in Knoxville and an important influence on state politics, and in the 1920s Justice Sanford...

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