Benedict to Lecture on Constitutional Politics in Gilded Age America

We have the following from the "ECU Notes" section of the Greenville (N.C.) Daily Reflector:

One of the nation’s leading constitutional scholars will give a free, public lecture Wednesday on “The First Question: Constitutional Politics in the Gilded Age.”

Michael Les Benedict, professor emeritus at The Ohio State University, will discuss a time when people considered almost every political question to involve constitutional issues, when the constitutional authority to enact laws was “the first question” to be decided, and when the people themselves made most of the decisions about how the Constitution should be interpreted.

The presentation will be at 7:30 p.m. in Room 0C-209 of the Science and Technology Building [on ECU's campus in Greenville, N.C.]

Benedict received his doctoral degree from William Marsh Rice University Graduate School, and his master of arts and bachelor of arts degrees from the University of Illinois. He spent 34 years at Ohio State, where he taught courses on American Legal and Constitutional History, American Civil War, Philosophy of History and Historical Methods, and U.S. Constitutional Law.

This presentation is sponsored by Charles W. Calhoun, ECU professor of history and the 2009 Thomas Harriot College of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor. Through this professorship, a scholar is invited to campus each academic year to give a free, public presentation on his or her area of expertise. For additional information, contact Calhoun at 328-6666 or calhounc@ecu.edu.