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Eberly College of Arts & Sciences Department of History
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Senator Rush D. Holt Lecture Series

Inviting distinguished historians in American history to West Virginia University to share their research and expertise with our students.

The first annual Rush D. Holt Lecture was presented by the West Virginia University Department of History on April 11, 2011. The lecture series is supported by the family of Senator Holt through the Senator Rush D. Holt Endowment established in 1998.

Inaugurating the lecture series was the Honorable Rush D. Holt, Jr., a U.S. Congressman from New Jersey and son of former U.S. Senator Rush D. Holt of West Virginia, after whom the series is named. Since the first Holt Lecture held in 2011, this series has brought some of the most prominent historians in American history to WVU to share their research and knowledge with the students in our department.  

Past Holt Lectures

  • 2011 - Rush D. Holt Jr.
    “Senator Rush Holt’s Filibuster, 1936: Aesop’s Fables and Miners’ Wages” — Inaugurating Lecture
  • 2012 - Nancy MacLean, Duke University
    “The Quest for Jobs and Justice since the 1950s”
  • 2013 - James Green, University of Massachusetts, Boston
    "America's Ireland: The National Impact of the West Virginia Mine Wars, 1912-1924"
  • 2014 - Joshua Piker, Professor, William and Mary Quarterly, Editor
    “Telling Stories in Early America, or, The Indian Who Went to London with an Eagle and Came Home with a Lion”
  • 2015 - Mary Beth Norton, Cornell University
    “The Seventh Tea Ship; or, a Tale of Shipwrecked Sailors, Combative Communities, and a Fractured Family”
  • 2016 - Martha Hodes, New York University
    “Mourning Lincoln: The Assassination and the Aftermath of the Civil War”
  • 2017 - Jon Butler, Yale University
    “Protestantism, American Religion and the Unanticipated Reformation”
  • 2018 - Walter Hixon, University of Akron
    "Israel’s Armor: The Role of the Israel Lobby in the History of the Palestine Conflict"
  • 2019 - Elizabeth Veron, University of Virginia
    "Armies of Deliverance: Union War Aims and Motivation"
  • 2021 - Lisa Tetrault, Carnegie Mellon University
    "When Women Won the Right to Vote: An American Fiction"
  • 2022 - Gabriel Winant, University of Chicago
    “The Next Shift: The Fall of Industry and the Rise of Health Care in Rust Belt America”
  • 2024 - Scott D. Sandage, Carnegie Mellon University
    "LAUGHING BUFFALO IN PARIS:  Metis History as Indigenous History "