More Than 200 Area High School Students to Attend Annual Jefferson Lecture at William Paterson University on November 17, 2016 James Gigantino II, associate professor of history, University of Arkansas, will present the topic “Slavery, Race, and the Long Road to Freedom in Jeffersonian New Jersey” James Gigantino II James Gigantino II, an associate professor of history at the University of Arkansas, will present the 32nd Annual Abram Kartch/Thomas Jefferson Lecture at William Paterson University in Wayne on Thursday, November 17 to more than 200 students from area high schools. Gigantino will discuss the topic “Slavery, Race, and the Long Road to Freedom in Jeffersonian New Jersey.” The program runs from 9:30 to 11:00 a.m. in Ballroom A, University Commons on campus. A limited number of seats for the free program will be available to the public. Gigantino received his PhD in history from the University of Georgia and is the author of The Ragged Road to Abolition: Slavery and Freedom in New Jersey, 1775-1865, which was awarded the 2015 Richard P. McCormick Prize by the New Jersey Historical Commission and the 2015 New Jersey Studies Academic Alliance Authors Award. He is the editor of The American Revolution in New Jersey: Where the Battlefront Meets the Home Front (Rutgers University Press, 2015) and Slavery and Secession in Arkansas: A Documentary History (University of Arkansas Press, 2015). The Abram Kartch/Thomas Jefferson Lecture Series was established with an endowment from Abram Kartch, an attorney and Jefferson scholar. Each year, William Paterson University presents a lecture examining a particular aspect of the thought of this great American. An essay contest for high school students will be conducted by the University in connection with the lecture. Certificates and a monetary prize will be awarded to the students who write the best essay on the theme developed in Gigantino’s lecture. The essays will be judged by members of the William Paterson faculty and the winner will be announced in early 2017. For additional information about the event, contact Lucia McMahon, William Paterson University associate professor of history, at 973-720-3044 or mcmahonlu@wpunj.edu.
