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The Changing Role of Media in Politics: From Tom Paine to Twitter

WVHC Event

Location/County: Charleston, Kanawha
May 19, 2015

The Humanities Council is partnering with the Harvard Club of West Virginia to present Harvard University Professor Timothy McCarthy for a lecture in Charleston. McCarthy will deliver “The Changing Role of Media in Politics: From Tom Paine to Twitter” at 7:00 p.m. on May 19 at the Woman’s Club of Charleston located at 1600 Virginia Street, East on Charleston’s East End. The program is free and the public is invited to attend.

“The Harvard Club of West Virginia is delighted to partner once again with the West Virginia Humanities Council to bring esteemed faculty members to Charleston,” said club member Dan Foster. Professor McCarthy’s panoramic lecture — from the pamphlet wars of the American Revolution to the social media revolution—will explore the history of the relationship between media and U.S. politics, with an emphasis on key moments of transition.

Timothy McCarthy is an award-winning scholar, teacher, and activist. He holds a joint faculty appointment in Harvard’s undergraduate honors program in history and literature and at the Harvard Kennedy School, where he is the founding director of the Sexuality, Gender, and Human Rights Program at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy. He is also the Stanley Paterson Professor of American History in the Boston Clemente Course in the Humanities in Dorchester, Massachusetts.

McCarthy graduated with honors in history and literature from Harvard College, and earned his M.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. in history from Columbia University. A historian of politics and social movements, Dr. McCarthy’s work focuses on slavery and abolition, media culture and communications; protest literature and the American radical tradition, the politics of race, gender and sexuality in the United States; and global human rights. He is author or editor of five books and has published numerous essays.