Coverage Opportunity

What:		The 1930s witnessed a myriad of challenges to the Jim Crow South, the British Empire, Stalinism, and fascism. Susan Pennybacker, Borden W. Painter, Jr. ’58, H’95 Associate Professor of European History, will discuss whether racial politics influenced London activists in the years between the first Scottsboro trial in Alabama and the outbreak of a new global war. Professor Pennybacker’s talk is the inaugural lecture for the Borden W. Painter, Jr. ’58, H’95 Endowed Professorship in European History. The endowed professorship was established in 2004 by the Trustees of Trinity College, with support from faculty, alumni, friends, and family. The endowed professorship is in recognition of the extraordinary career of Professor Painter and his service to Trinity College for more than 40 years.
When:		Thursday, September 28, 2006, at 4:30 p.m.
Where:		McCook Auditorium on the Trinity College campus
Background:		Susan Pennybacker has taught in the history department at Trinity College since 1983, and as a visitor at Wesleyan University, New York University, The City College of New York, and the University of the Western Cape (South Africa). Her publications include A Vision for London, 1889-1914 (Routledge, 1995) and Mother Ada Wright and the International Campaign to ‘Free the Scottsboro Boys,’ 1931-34 (co-authored, American Historical Review, 2001). Her book on race and transatlantic political culture in the 1930s is being published by Princeton University Press. Pennybacker co-chaired the study group on “Race in Europe” during 1998-2000 at the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies at Harvard University and has served on the editorial board of the Journal of Modern History and the Hog River Journal. She is a past president of the Northeast Conference on British Studies. Pennybacker’s current research is on South African political exile, part of a larger project on postwar London. She is also co-editing a collection of annotated images and documents on the global Scottsboro campaign and its aftermath. Pennybacker has directed the Hartford Studies Project at Trinity since the early 1990s. The project is a recipient of a Rockefeller Partnerships in Community Transformation award in documentary. She received an M.A. from the University of Pennsylvania and her Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge. Borden W. Painter, Jr., graduated from Trinity College in 1958 and went on to earn a M.Div. at the General Theological Seminary (1963) and his Ph.D. in history at Yale (1965). He subsequently was ordained a priest in the Episcopal Church. He began teaching at Trinity part-time in 1964 and full-time in 1966. His courses covered topics from medieval to modern, with particular emphasis on Renaissance and Reformation Europe, Tudor and Stuart England, and modern Italy. He served as chairman of the history department twice, dean of the faculty (1984-87), director of Italian Programs (Trinity Rome and Italian Elderhostel, 1989-2004) and interim president on two occasions (1994-95, 2003-04). Trinity awarded him an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters in 1995 and the trustees designated him Trinity’s 20th president and president emeritus upon his retirement in 2004. His book Mussolini’s Rome, Rebuilding the Eternal City was published in 2005. He and his wife, Ann Dunning Painter, have lived in West Hartford since 1966.

For more information, call (860) 297-2397. This lecture is free and open to the public.

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