Dr. George C. Herring, author of America’s most widely used textbook on the Vietnam War, will deliver the 2012 Strickland Visiting Scholar Lecture in History on Thursday, Oct. 25, in the State Farm Lecture Hall, Room S-102, of MTSU’s Business and Aerospace Building.

Dr. George C. Herring

The topic of his 6:30 p.m. address is “Vietnam: The War That Won’t Go Away.” It’s free and open to the public.

Herring, author of America’s Longest War: The United States and Vietnam 1950-1975, also will meet for formal and informal classes and workshops with undergraduates, graduates and faculty during his visit to MTSU, which is coordinated by the College of Liberal Arts.

The Strickland Visiting Scholar program allows students to meet with renowned scholars whose expertise spans a variety of historical issues. The Strickland family established the program in memory of Dr. Roscoe Lee Strickland Jr., a longtime professor of European history at MTSU and the first president of the university’s Faculty Senate.

Herring has been teaching about and researching the Vietnam War for more than 25 years and has made presentations on the subject throughout the world, earning National Endowment for the Humanities, Fulbright and Guggenheim fellowships and visiting professorships along the way.

The Alumni Professor of History Emeritus at the University of Kentucky joined the UK faculty in 1969 after four years at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio. He served three terms as the UK history department chair and taught classes ranging from introductory survey courses in U.S. history to graduate seminars. He also directed the work of 35 doctoral students and more than 50 Master of Arts students.

In addition to America’s Longest War, now in its fourth edition, Herring is the author of From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations Since 1776, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in nonfiction and the recipient of the 2008 Robert Ferrell Award by the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations. He also is the author of The Secret Diplomacy of the Vietnam War: The Negotiating Volumes of the Pentagon Papers and LBJ and Vietnam: A Different Kind of War.

Herring, now retired from teaching, is a member and former president and journal editor of The Society of American Historians, an honorary organization created to encourage literary distinction in history writing.

For more information about this Strickland Visiting Scholar Lecture, please contact Connie Huddleston at 615-494-7628 or via e-mail at Connie.Huddleston@mtsu.edu.