Annual Salameno Lecture Welcomes U.S. Southern History Expert Peter Coclanis

February 16, 2010

Historian Peter Coclanis will give this semester's Salameno Lecture on Monday, March 1 at 4 p.m. in the Martin institute. The Associate Provost for International Affairs and Professor of History at the University of North Carolina, Coclanis will discuss the American South from a global perspective.

An authority on American Southern history, particularly in the 18th and 19th centuries, Coclanis' most recent research has focused on Southeast Asia in the 19th and 20th century. He is currently working on a project on the creation of integrated world markets for tropical and semi-tropical commodities, with a special emphasis on rice. This project has taken him to archives and rice paddies all over the world.

At UNC, Coclanis teaches specialized courses on various aspects of American economic and business history, on Southeast Asian economic history, and on global economic history.

The author of many works in economic history, he won the Allan Nevins Prize of the Society of American Historians for his book The Shadow of a Dream: Economic Life and Death in the South Carolina Low Country, 1670-1920.

His other works include: The Atlantic Economy during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries: Organization, Operation, Practice, and Personnel; Confronting Southern Poverty; Ideas, Ideologies and Social Movements: The United States Experience Since 1800, and many more.

Prior to becoming the Associate Provost at UNC, he served as Associate Dean for General Education from 1993 to 1998, and chaired the History Department from 1998 to 2003.

Coclanis received his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1984, joining the faculty at UNC-Chapel Hill that same year.  

Contact

For more information, contact Communications and Media Relations at 508-565-1321.