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Social Anthropologist to Give Annual Jefferson Lecture At William Paterson University
Dr. Irene Castle McLaughlin, a social anthropologist with a lifelong interest in the rural American West, both past and present, will present the 21st annual Abram Kartch/Thomas Jefferson Lecture at William Paterson University in Wayne on Wednesday, May 4, 2005.
More than 400 students from area high schools are expected to attend Castle McLaughlin’s address, titled “Jefferson, Lewis and Clark, and the Indians,” which will begin at 9:45 a.m. in Shea Center on campus. A limited number of seats for the free program will be available to the public.
Castle McLaughlin is associate curator of North American ethnography at Harvard’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnography. Her professional work has focused on the Native peoples of the Great Plains. From 1997-2003, she directed interdisciplinary research on the Peabody’s collection of Native American objects acquired during the epic Lewis and Clark expedition, which are the only surviving artifacts of their kind. She is the author of “Arts of Diplomacy: Lewis and Clark’s Indian Collection” (2003), which re-interprets the Lewis and Clark expedition based on the explorers’ relationships with Indian people.
The Abram Kartch/Thomas Jefferson Lecture Series began in 1985 after Abram Kartch, a retired Paterson businessman and Jefferson scholar, provided William Paterson with an endowment to establish and continue the series. Designed to provoke discussion about the relationship of Jefferson’s words and thoughts to modern society, the series has presented lectures by many of the country’s leading Jefferson scholars, including Henry Steele Commager, James B. Shenton, Jan Lewis and Pauline Maier. Kartch, who in later years resided in Wayne, died in 1997 at age 93.
An essay contest for high school and college students will be conducted by the University in connection with the lecture. Certificates and monetary prizes will be awarded to students who write the two best essays on the theme developed in Castle McLaughlin’s lecture.
The essays will be judged by Robert Wolk, William Paterson Library; and Evelyn Gonzalez and Suzanne Bowles, William Paterson University department of history. Winners will be announced by June 6 and their winning papers will be placed on file in the University library. Their names will be engraved on twin plaques kept by their schools for the next year.
For additional information about the event, contact George Robb, William Paterson University associate professor of history, at 973-720-3058.
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