Professor to lecture about Missouri in Civil War

"Southern Cross, North Star: The Cultural Politics of Civil War Memory in Missouri and the Middle Border, 1865-1915" will be the topic when the Harold Holmes Dugger Lecture is presented April 16 at Southeast Missouri State University.

The lecture, sponsored by the Southeast Department of History, will be delivered by Christopher Phillips, professor of history at the University of Cincinnati.

The lecture will begin at 7:30 p.m. in the University Center ballroom and is free and open to the public.

Phillips is the author of seven books and a dozen essays on regionalism, particularly as expressed in the history of the border slave states that remained in the Union during the Civil War, according to a news release from Southeast.

His latest book, "The Rivers Ran Backward: The Civil War on the Middle Border and the Making of American Regionalism," will be published in October by Oxford University Press.

In "Southern Cross, North Star," Phillips will discuss how Missouri straddled north-south and east-west borders during the war.