Peter Kastor to speak on exploration of American west March 9

Peter Kastor, Ph.D., assistant professor of history and American culture studies in Arts & Sciences and a 2006 Faculty Fellow, will speak on “An Accurate Empire: How American Explorers Described Their Country and Themselves” at 4 p.m., Thursday, March 9, in Anheuser-Busch Hall, Room 305.

Kastor is the third of six speakers appearing this spring as part of the Faculty Fellows Lecture and Workshop Series, presented by the Center for the Humanities Arts & Sciences. His talk will center around the explorers dispatched to survey the North American West during the first two decades of the nineteenth century. Kastor will address developments in print, visual and political culture that informed the way these explorers attempted to describe what they saw in words in pictures.

This event is free and open to the public. Anheuser-Busch Hall is located on Olympian Way, just north of the intersection with Forsyth Boulevard. For seat reservations or more information, call (314) 935-5576.

Kastor received his doctorate from the University of Virginia in 1999, specializing in the early American republic and related fields. He is the author of The Nation’s Crucible: The Louisiana Purchase and the Creation of America (2004), as well as editor of The Louisiana Purchase: Emergence of an American Nation (2002).

Subsequent speakers in the Faculty Fellows series will be:

March 23 & 24: Martha Sandweiss, Ph.D., professor of American studies and history at Amherst College.

April 17: Erin McGlothlin, Ph.D., assistant professor of Germanic language & literatures in Arts & Sciences.

April 24 & 25: Mariët Westermann, Ph.D., director of the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University.