HARVARD HISTORIAN JOHN STILGOE SPEAKS FOR OCT. 18 PRESIDENT'S LECTURE SERIES

Noted historian John R. Stilgoe will address "How the Images Arrived: Circa 1890 Advertising and Contemporary Liberal Arts Education" at 8 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 18, for the Old Dominion University President's Lecture Series. The lecture is free and open to the public, seating is on a first-come, first-served basis. It will be held in the Mills Godwin Jr. Life Sciences Building auditorium.

Stilgoe is the author of "Outside Lies Magic: Discovering History and Inspiration in Ordinary Places"; "Metropolitan Corridor: Railroads and the American Scene," "Alongshore," "Common Landscape of America, 1580-1845," "Borderland: Origins of the American Suburb, 1820-1939" and "Shallow Water Dictionary: A Grounding in Estuary English."
He is the Robert and Lois Orchard Professor in History of Landscape in Harvard University's visual and environmental studies department. Stilgoe has taught courses for more than a quarter of a century on the evolution of the built environment and its depiction in visual images.

His recent research, which has looked at the transformation of rural and small-town life after 1890, has even published in medical journals because he attributes the stress so many Americans feel to definite historical origins. Stilgoe also is investigating the growing interfaces among fantasy, advertising and cyberspace rendering of real and surreal environments.

For more information about the lecture call 683-3114.