SPARTANBURG, S.C. – Dr. Kenneth J. Banks, associate professor of history at Wofford College, is one of select group of faculty members nationwide chosen by the Council of Independent Colleges (CIC) and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History to participate in a special American history seminar on “Slave Narratives.”

The multidisciplinary seminar for faculty members in history, English and related fields will use the slave narratives, as well as other assigned secondary reading, to comprehend the lived experiences of slaves in the transition from bondage to freedom. From a pool of 66 highly competitive nominations, 27 faculty members were selected to participate in the seminar, which will be held June 19-24, 2016, at Yale University.

David W. Blight, Class of 1954 Professor of American History at Yale University, will lead the seminar. He is the author of “American Oracle: The Civil War in the Civil Rights Era” (2011); “A Slave No More: Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom, Including Their Narratives of Emancipation” (2007) and “Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory” (2001), for which he won the 2001 Frederick Douglass Prize and the 2002 Bancroft and Lincoln Prizes.

The seminar is funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The CIC is an association of 765 nonprofit independent colleges and universities and higher education affiliates and organizations that has worked since 1956 to support college and university leadership, advance institutional excellence and enhance public understanding of private higher education’s contributions to society.

The Gilder Lehrman Institute was established in 1994 to promote the study and the love of American history. The institute organizes seminars and enrichment programs for teachers; supports and produces publications and traveling exhibitions; sponsors lectures by eminent historians; develops electronic resources; creates history high schools and extracurricular history programs; and founds research centers at universities and libraries.