19th-century social history scholar to speak Feb. 20

Helen Horowitz, a visiting scholar from Smith College and expert on 19th-century social history, will lecture and participate in a panel discussion Feb. 20 at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Horowitz's featured talk, "The Flash Press in the 1840s in New York City," is part of the Plains Humanities Alliance Research and Region Colloquium series. This talk will take place at 3:30 p.m., at the Great Plains Art Museum, 1155 Q St., Hewit Place.

She will also appear at a panel discussion, "Sex Workers: The Job of the Cultural Historian of Gender," with Melissa Homestead, professor of English at UNL, and Margaret Jacobs, professor of history and director of Women's and Gender Studies at UNL. This panel will convene at 1:30 p.m. in 228 Andrews Hall, south of 14th and U streets.

The lecture and panel discussion are free and open to the public. Horowitz will also meet with students in a "European Culture and Society" course to present a guest lecture about Victoria Woodhull, a 19th-century American feminist and communist.

Horowitz is the Sydenham Clark Parsons professor of history at Smith, a liberal arts college for women in Northhampton, Mass. Her research ranges over a number of areas, including urban life, cultural philanthropy, sporting men in the 1840s, women, higher education, biography, sexuality, sexual representation, censorship, intimate life, and understandings of health and illness in the 19th century. Her publications include "Culture and the City," "Alma Mater" and "Campus Life." Her "Rereading Sex" explores sexual representations and the campaign to censor them that led to the landmark Comstock Law of 1873, which barred obscene materials, contraceptive information and devices, and abortion advertisements from the U.S. mails. This book received the Merle Curti Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

Her visit is sponsored by UNL's Nineteenth-Century Studies Program and the Plains Humanities Alliance. Support is also provided by the departments of History and English, the Women's and Gender Studies Program, and the Center for Great Plains Studies.

CONTACT: Debra Eisloeffel, Plains Humanities Alliance, (402) 472-9478