UNH Lecture Explores History of Indian Summer

Contact: Erika Mantz
603-862-1567
UNH Media Relations

October 30, 2003



DURHAM, N.H. - A Boston University professor will lecture on the invention of Indian summer as a season particularly identified with New England culture as part of the Heritage New Hampshire Lecture Series at the University of New Hampshire Friday, Nov. 14, 2003, at 1 p.m. in Hamilton Smith 101. His lecture is free and open to the public, and will be followed by a book signing and reception.

Adam Sweeting, acting chairman of the humanities division at Boston University, will speak about the numerous ways Indian summer weather has been experienced and portrayed in poetry, folklore, painting and the popular imagination. His book, “Beneath the Second Sun: A Cultural History of Indian Summer,” was recently published by the University Press of New England in UNH's Revisiting New England series. The Heritage New Hampshire Lecture Series is sponsored by UNH's Center for New England Culture with funding from Heritage New Hampshire.

Sweeting is also the author of “Reading Houses and Building Books: Andrew Jackson Downing and the Architecture of Popular Antebellum Literature, 1835-1855,” and editor of a new edition of Celia Thaxter's “Among the Isles of Shoals. For more information call David Watters at (603) 862-0353.