Drayton Hall Distinguished Speakers Series: S. Max Edelson to Present on April 17th

We are pleased to announce that Richard and Jill Almeida have graciously underwritten the third installment in the Drayton Hall Distinguished Speakers Series. Richard is a member of the Drayton Hall Site Advisory Council and both Richard and Jill are active with a number of organizations in the Charleston community.

The April event will feature S. Max Edelson’s presentation Mapping Carolina: Cartography and the Quest for Empire in the Colonial Southeast. Edelson is an Associate Professor of History and Director of Graduate Studies in the Corcoran Department of History at the University of Virginia, where he co-directs the UVA-Monticello Early American Seminar. His research focuses on colonial British America and the Atlantic world. His first book, Plantation Enterprise in Colonial South Carolina (Harvard, 2006) examines the relationship between planters and the Lowcountry environment as the key to understanding a society that was as repressive as it was prosperous. His forthcoming book, The New Map of Empire: How Britain Imagined America Before Independence (Harvard, 2015), examines the importance of cartography to the American empire.

Edelson follows our March presenter and acclaimed Cornell University faculty member, Mary Beth Norton, who presented Beyond Boston: The Fate of the Seven Tea Ships of 1773. All presentations are digitally recorded, with video posted on the Drayton Hall YouTube channel and linked under the speaker’s bio on the Distinguished Speakers Series website. The fall 2014 series will bring another trio of notable speakers to Charleston on September 18, October 16, and November 20, 2014.

Know Before You Go

All Drayton Hall Distinguished Speakers Series programs will begin promptly at 7:00 p.m. and will be hosted by South Carolina Society Hall, 72 Meeting Street, downtown Charleston.

Doors will open by 6:30 p.m., seating is limited, and a dessert reception will follow. This program is free to Friends of Drayton Hall and their guests.

Please contact Steve Mount, Director of Philanthropy, at 843-769-2601 or smount@draytonhall.org with any questions.