2024 Townsend Lecture
The College of Arts and Sciences at the University of South Carolina welcomed former SC Governor David Beasley as the featured speaker for the 2024 Townsend Lecture Series hosted on September 19.
In this conversation, David Beasley joined Institute for Southern Studies Director Mark Smith and discussed what it means to lead a state in the U.S. South. The interview also explored Beasley's upbringing in South Carolina, his education, and accomplishments. It also provided a glimpse into Beasley's life, ranging from his time as a state representative and governor to his life and endeavors after leaving office.
We are very appreciative of Beasley's willingness to spend the evening with us, and we hope you will attend our next year's lecture.
Save the Date
Stay tuned for the next Townsend Lecture coming September 17, 2025. This conversation will feature Dr. Kizzmekia S. Corbett-Helaire in her lecture entitled "Tackling Coronavirus Vaccines with Science and Community Outreach." Dr. Corbett-Helaire is an assistant professor of immunology and infectious diseases for the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. More details to come as time draws closer to the event. You don't want to miss it!
About the Townsend Lectures
Dr. J. Ives Townsend was a native of Greenwood, South Carolina. In 1996, as Professor Emeritus of Human Genetics at the Medical College of Virginia, Virginia Commonwealth University, he established an endowment in the University of South Carolina Educational Foundation to fund the Townsend Lectures. The lectures honor his parents (Joel Ives Townsend, 1911, and Emma Chiles Cothran Townsend) and grandparents (Robert Wallace Townsend, who attended the University of South Carolina in 1883-1884, and Amelia Dalton Carter Townsend). Following in the footsteps of his father, grandfather, and many other relatives, including two great-great-grandfathers who graduated from the institution in the 1820s, Dr. Townsend attended the university and graduated with a B.S. in Chemistry with a minor in Biology in 1941. He was a member of Phi Beta Kappa.
Dr. Townsend strongly believed that the sciences, the arts, and the humanities are not separate branches of knowledge, but should be integrated within an academic setting. In addition to being a scientist, he was a connoisseur of Southern art and architecture. Thus, in making his gift to the university, he stipulated that the lectures alternate between two topics: “The Impact of the Biological Sciences on Society” and “Southern Culture”. He cared deeply for students, and admitted that his true goal was to make a significant difference in their lives. He often stated: “Today's students deserve all that I am able to give them”.
Dr. Townsend passed away on July 29, 2005 at the age of 85.
Past Lectures
- Shirley Tilghman, "Homo sapiens 2.0: Will Modern Genetics Change Who We Are?", a Biology lecture
- Jeff Gordon, a Biology lecture
- Edward Ayers, "Southern Journey: The American South in Motion, 1790-2020", a Southern Studies lecture
- Elizabeth Engelhardt, "Boardinghouse Reach: Foodways, Gender, and Southern Cultures", a Southern Studies lecture
- Carole Heilman, "Intersecting Societies: Our Relationship with the Microbial World", a Biology lecture
- Siddhartha Mukherjee, "Writing A Biography of Cancer", a Biology lecture
- Tony Horwitz, a Southern Studies lecture
- John Shelton Reed, "The Balkans of Barbecue: Pit-Cooked Meat in the Carolinas", a Southern Studies lecture
- Chris Field, "Climate Change: Impacts, Adaptations and Solutions", a Biology lecture
- Michael Ruse, "The Evolution-Creation Struggle: An American Story", a Biology lecture
- Rudolf Jaenisch, "Nuclear Cloning, Stem Cells and Reprogramming of the Genome", a Biology lecture
- Jacqueline Michel, "The Gulf War Oil Spill Twelve Years Later: Biological Consequences of ECO-Terrorism", a Biology lecture
- William R. Ferris, "Memory and Sense of Place in the American South", a Southern Studies lecture
- D.A. Henderson, "The Darker Side of 21st Century Biology", a Biology lecture
- Sterling Stuckey, "The State of Scholarship on Slave Art and Labor", a Southern Studies lecture
- Graham T. T. Molitor, "Promise and Perils in the Future of Biotechnology and the Life Sciences", a Biology lecture
- Wendell D. Garrett, "Southern Silver: Three Centuries of Craft, Beauty & Tradition", a Southern Studies lecture
- Robert N. Proctor, "Racial Hygiene: How Doctors and Biomedical Scientists Organized Hitler's Program of Mass Murder", a Biology lecture
- Richard Guy Wilson, "Is There A Southern Architecture?", a Southern Studies lecture
- James Gordon, "Complimentary and Alternative Medicine: Prescription for the New Millennium", a Biology lecture
- Bob Mondello, "What I Learned about the South from the Movies", a Southern Studies lecture
- Thomas R. Meagher, "Evolutionary Biology in the New Millennium", a Biology lecture
- Robert M. Hicklin Jr., Martha R. Severens and Patricia Moore Shaffer, "Defining Southern Art", a Southern Studies lecture
- Lee M. Silver, "Remaking Eden: Human Cloning and Far Beyond in a Brave New World", a Biology lecture
- Shelby Foote, "The Novelist as Historian", a Southern Studies lecture