Coinciding with the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Stones River in Murfreesboro, award-winning author and historian Dr. Amanda Foreman will be the keynote speaker for the seventh annual MTSU Scholars Week at 7:00 o'clock Monday night, April 1st, in the Student Union Building.
Foreman, author of “A World on Fire: An Epic History of Two Nations Divided,” will provide a lecture along with a question-and-answer session and book signing will follow her one-hour presentation. This Monday evening's event is free and open to the public.
Before speaking, Foreman will attend a private reception for members of the MTSU history department and Scholars Week Committee in the president’s conference room.
University Provost Brad Bartel said Dr. Van West, director of Tennessee Center for Historic Preservation, first suggested Foreman as a Scholars Week keynote possibility.
“I thought she would be excellent for Scholar’s Week because of the quality of her book, ‘A World on Fire,’ and that her appearance would highlight our nationally known Public History program and the state’s celebration of the 150th anniversary of Civil War events,” Bartel said.
Bartel said Foreman will meet with MTSU students during her campus visit.
In addition to “A World on Fire,” Foreman is the author of the award-winning best seller, “Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire.”
She is the daughter of Carl Foreman, an Oscar-winning screenwriter of many film classics including “The Bridge on the River Kwai,” “High Noon” and “The Guns of Navarone.”
Born in London, raised in Los Angeles and educated in England, Foreman attended Sarah Lawrence College and Columbia University in New York. She earned her doctorate in Eighteenth-Century British History from Oxford University in 1998.
“Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire” was a No. 1 bestseller in England and bestseller for many weeks in the United States. It has been translated into 12 languages. The book was nominated for several awards and won the Whitbreak Prize for Best Biography in 1999. It inspired a television documentary, a radio play starring Dame Judi Dench and a movie, “The Duchess,” starring Keira Knightley and Ralph Fiennes.
In addition to regularly writing and reviewing for newspapers and magazines, Foreman also has served on a number of juries including The Orange Prize, the Guardian First Book Prize and the National Book Awards. She currently serves as a judge for the Dan David Prize, the PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize and the Man Booker Prize.
Foreman lives in New York with her husband and five children.
