The Michael J. Colligan History Project will continue its public history series focusing on “American Wars & American Life.”

• Sept. 9, Witnessing the War on Terror in American Culture, 7:30 p.m., Harry T. Wilks Conference Center. John E. Bodnar, Distinguished Professor of History at Indiana University and Organization of American Historians Distinguished Lecturer, explores encounters with mass violence that horribly rupture people’s lives and extraordinary efforts to heal them, highlighting the trauma and pain caused by the 9/11 attacks and experiencing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
• Sept. 30, Reconciling and Reuniting the Nation: How Americans Have Remembered the Civil War, 7:30 p.m., Harry T. Wilks Conference Center. Caroline E. Janney, Professor of History at Purdue University, Organization of American Historians Distinguished Lecturer, and President of the Society of Civil War Historians, discusses reuniting and reconciling the nation after the American Civil War, how civilians, veterans, women and U.S. Colored Troops understood that war, and how its meanings changed in later centuries.
• Nov. 10, World War I and the Modern American Woman, 7:30 p.m., Harry T. Wilks Conference Center. Lynn Dumenil, Robert Glass Cleland Professor of American History Emerita at Occidental College and Organization of American Historians Distinguished Lecturer, shares popular visual imagery of American women during World War I that reveals a key issue of women’s history: the rise of the modern “new woman.” Learn how media attention to women who were engaged in war service at home and abroad helped consolidate the perception of a “new woman” who challenged boundaries that had previously restricted women’s lives.
• April 5, Ernie Pyle & Americans at War, Jim Blount History Educator Award Lecture, 7:30 p.m., Harry T. Wilks Conference Center. James Tobin, Professor of Media, Journalism and Film at Miami University, considers the famous journalist Ernie Pyle as the nation’s eyewitness to World War II, who as its most popular war correspondent left a lasting imprint on the way Americans perceive that war, all U.S. wars since, and the image of the American soldier.

The Michael J. Colligan History Project is a partnership of the Colligan Fund Committee of the Hamilton Community Foundation and Miami University Hamilton. Its goals are bringing the past to life, creating historical thinking, and building community identity. For more information call (513) 785-3277 or visit www.colliganproject.org.  Miami University Hamilton is located at 1601 University Blvd.