Phi Alpha Theta Keynote by Distinguished Historian David Waldstreicher

On Thursday, April 25 at 5 p.m., in the Meeting Room in the University Center (Room 206), The Department of History will be hosting its annual Phi Alpha Theta lecture and induction ceremony, where students will be officially inducted into Phi Alpha Theta, the National History Honors Society.

The annual Phi Alpha Theta lecture will be delivered by David Waldstreicher, Ph.D., distinguished professor of history at the CUNY Graduate Center. Waldstreicher will be speaking on his latest book, The Odyssey of Phillis Wheatley: A Poet’s Journeys Through American Slavery and Independence (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023), a New York Times notable book for 2023.

David Waldstreicher is a historian of early and 19th-century America with particular interests in political history, cultural history, slavery and antislavery, and print culture. The Odyssey of Phillis Wheatley is the most deeply researched biography of the poet. The New York Times described his willingness to put Wheatley “smack in the middle of the raging debate over the relationship between the American Revolution and slavery,” and praised his achievement in not only “tracing her life” but “also recreat[ing] the18th-century intellectual world Wheatley actually lived in.” The Odyssey of Phillis Wheatley has also received rave reviews from Oprah, which called it a “rich and necessary book,” and The New York Times Book Review, which said the book is “at once historical biography at its best, literary analysis at its sharpest and a subversive indictment of current political discourse questioning the relevance of Black life in our country’s history."

- SHU Gourmet Dining Services will provide catering for this event.

Categories: Arts and Culture