C-SPAN Videos

Historian Robert Rydell describes how world’s fairs inspired and promoted innovations in architecture, the arts, music, science, and technology, not to mention consumer culture and mass entertainment. His presentation complements the exhibit Inventing the Modern World: Decorative Arts at the World’s Fairs, 1851-1939 currently on display at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.

The first vice president to occupy the White House after the death of the incumbent, John Tyler was derided by critics as “His Accidency.” Yet historian Edward P. Crapol depicts Tyler as a bold leader who used the malleable executive system to his advantage and enhanced presidential power.

Crapol, author of John Tyler: The Accidental President, is the William E. Pullen professor of American history, emeritus, at the College of William and Mary.

University of Pennsylvania historian Stephanie McCurry offers a new interpretation of the Confederacy that contends the South sowed the seeds of its demise in creating a regime that excluded white women and slaves, which together comprised a majority of the population.

Confederate Reckoning was a finalist for the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for History. McCurry’s talk is the keynote address for the Richard D. McKinzie Research Symposium.

Co-sponsored by the University of Missouri-Kansas City Department of History.

No event in American history was more pivotal — or more contested — than the decision by Congress to declare independence in July 1776. Even months after American blood had been shed at Lexington and Concord, many colonists remained loyal to Britain.