Connor Williams’ speaking engagements draw on both professional experience and scholarly research to discuss how history and memory interact with the politics of our present and pursuits of our future. He shares illustrative examples from the fraught areas of our national past, speaks from first-hand experience on the possibilities and pitfalls of controversial commemorations, and advises on navigating the complicated and conflicting natures of our individual and shared histories.
A consistently well reviewed and well received speaker, his past lectures have explored topics including the Crisis of the Union, the American Civil War, Reconstruction, The Gilded Age, the life of Frederick Douglass, the Civil Rights Movement, The Second World War, warfare and memory in American society, the meanings and methods of African American history, and his work on the Naming Commission. Through reflections on large scale movements and major events to biographical studies of individual actors to broader meditations on history, memory and commemoration, Williams’ public lectures, forums, and conversations are commended for both the information he provides his audience and the methodologies he models in delivering them.
As a British novelist one most succinctly put it: the past is a foreign country. But as another author just as truthfully said, the past is never dead. It’s not even past. As a speaker, Williams provides his audiences with the tools, information, and “road maps” by which to ethically and effectively encounter and interpret all of our yesterdays, so as to understand how they have impacted and shaped our current lives.
Connor Williams 