Hickory – The final of this semester’s three-part First Friday lecture series at Lenoir-Rhyne University will take place Friday, April 4 at 10 a.m. in the Center for Teaching and Learning in Rudisill Library. This event will feature Julie Voss, Ph.D., professor of English at Lenoir-Rhyne University. Voss’s presentation is entitled “Pirates or Corsairs, Captives or Slaves? Language and Identity in Barbary Captivity Narratives.” Voss will consider: What’s in a word? What difference does it make if someone is labeled a “pirate” or a “buccaneer” or a “corsair”? A “captive” or a “slave”? If a captive is “ransomed” or “redeemed”? In the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries, hundreds of people were taken captive in the Mediterranean and held for ransom or forced labor, and dozens of those captives wrote accounts of their ordeals. This session will explore the historical context for these narratives and the linguistic choices those writers made, to look at the political and personal weight of language.
First Friday lectures are free and open to the public. They will also be livestreamed via Zoom. Additional details may be found at https://www.lr.edu/first-fridays.
