Lee University’s Dr. Drew Bledsoe will give a lecture on Monday, March 18, discussing the history and impact of Confederate monuments and the Confederate flag. The lecture will be held in the Johnson Lecture Hall, located in Lee’s Humanities Center at 7 p.m.

Bledsoe’s lecture, “Confederate Symbols: History and Perception,” will look at the history of the Confederate flag and how it is used as a symbol, and the history of monuments and memorials to the Confederacy and its leaders. He will connect the significance of the flag and monuments to contemporary controversies about the memory of the Civil War and race in America.

“As we continue to honor Martin Luther King’s legacy, it’s important to understand that symbols like the Confederate flag and monuments can have complicated histories with evolving meanings for different people,” said Bledsoe. “We choose how to remember our past and those choices, reflected in symbols like flags and monuments, are incredibly important.”

Bledsoe joined Lee’s faculty in 2013, where he currently serves as an assistant professor of history. His research and teaching interests are in the American Civil War and Reconstruction, the American Revolutionary era, and more. In 2015, Bledsoe had his first book, “Citizen-Officers: The Union and Confederate Volunteer Junior Officer Corps in the American Civil War,” published.

Bledsoe earned his doctorate and master’s degree in American history at Rice University.

Lee alumna Indyasia Fowler will assist in the lecture and discussion, both of which are free and open to the public.

For more information, call the Department of History, Political Science, and Humanities at (423) 614-8137.