Bertram Wyatt-Brown (Professor of History Emeritus, University of Florida, and
Visiting Scholar, Johns Hopkins University) to Lecture at ENC on

"Murder by Duel: The Historian as Expert Witness"

Thursday, April 23, 8:00 am, Old Colony, Rm 101
Free and Open to the Public

Sponsored by the History Department and the Pre-Law Program


On Thursday, April 23, distinguished American historian Bertram Wyatt-Brown will be speaking to prof Stephens' Forging an American Nation class. His talk is titled "Murder by Duel." 

Wyatt-Brown is the author of over 100 scholarly articles and essays and has written a variety of accliamed books.  His Southern Honor: Ethics and Behavior in the Old South was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.  Novelist Walker Percy called the book "A remarkable achievement--a re-creation of the living reality of the antebellum South from thousands of bits and pieces of the dead past."  "Unlike so many historians who have been interested in handing down judgments, favorable or unfavorable, on the Old South," wrote Harvard historian David Herbert Donald, "Wyatt-Brown has studied Southerners much as an anthropologist would an aboriginal tribe. An important, original book which challenges so many widely held beliefs about the Old South."

Wyatt-Brown will be speaking on Thursday about his experience as an expert historian witness in a recent murder case in West Virginia.  The case involved the question of whether or not a violent, deadly altercation between two men constituted a "duel," according to an anti-dueling Virginia statute dating back to 1849.  According to Wyatt-Brown: "Historians are sometimes called to the witness box in civil trials, chiefly regarding questions of racial discrimination and civil rights cases.  Seldom, however, does a member of our profession serve as an expert on some historically pertinent issue in a criminal trial, such as the case of State v. Simpson in January 2009. A defense attorney, Lacy Wright, was to open this new vista into American crime and mayhem to an historian, who was, for the first time, called upon to serve as a trial witness. Unless some reader knows of other examples, I can confidently say that I may be the only historian ever to be placed in a murder case as a trial witness."

All students and faculty are welcome.  The talk should be of special interest to pre-law students as well as those with an interest in history and criminal justice. 

Past ENC History Dept. Lectures

The James R. Cameron Center for History, Law, & Governrnent  | Eastern Nazarene College | 23 East Elm Avenue  | Quincy, Massachusetts 02170  | Phone: 1-617-745-3000  |  email: r a n d a l l . s t e p h e n s @ e n c . e d u


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