University of Alaska-Anchorage: “Churchill at War on the Nile”
On November 30, 2021, faculty partner James Muller will speak for the University of Alaska’s Chartwell Lecture Series on Winston Churchill and his military experience in Sudan:
The River War, Winston Churchill’s second book, describes the reconquest of the Sudan from the Islamist regime of the Dervishes by an Anglo-Egyptian army commanded by General Herbert Kitchener, 1896–99. Churchill participated in the campaign as an officer and a war correspondent, charging with the cavalry at the climactic battle of Omdurman. His book, published in two volumes in 1899, is the most impressive of five books he wrote before he entered Parliament in 1901 at the age of 26. Abridged into a single volume three years later, it has been out of print in its unabridged version for more than 120 years. After 32 years of work, Professor Muller has edited the definitive edition of the book, published by St. Augustine’s Press, which won the 2021 Literary Award from the International Churchill Society. Professor Muller will tell the story of preparing the new edition and speak about the significance of the book for understanding Churchill’s thoughts on empire, war, race, and religion.
Tuesday, November 30, 2021 • 7:30 PM AKDT
A hybrid virtual/in-person event
Free and open to the public
James W. Muller is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Alaska, Anchorage, where he has taught since 1983, and Chairman of the Board of Academic Advisers of the International Churchill Society. Educated at Harvard University and the Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris, he is a by-fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge, and served as a White House Fellow in 1983–84 and an Academic Visitor at the London School of Economics and Political Science in 1988–89. Professor Muller is editor of The Revival of Constitutionalism (University of Nebraska Press, 1988), Churchill as Peacemaker (Cambridge University Press, 1997), Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” Speech Fifty Years Later (University of Missouri Press, 1999), of Churchill’s interwar books of essays, Thoughts and Adventures (ISI Books, 2009) and Great Contemporaries (ISI Books, 2012), and of Churchill’s earlier book, The River War: An Historical Account of the Reconquest of the Soudan, 2 vols. (St. Augustine’s Press, 2021). He is at work on a new edition of Churchill’s autobiography, My Early Life: A Roving Commission.
Professor Muller is a JMC faculty partner.
Learn more about James W. Muller >>
The Chartwell Lecture Series, named after Winston Churchill’s country house in Kent, is organized by the Department of Political Science at the University of Alaska Anchorage and features lectures on a wide range of subjects in the humanities and liberal arts. Lectures are free and open to members of the general public. Staffing is provided by Kathleen L. Behnke in the Dean’s Office of the College of Arts and Sciences.
The Department of Political Science gratefully acknowledges the co-sponsorship of Pi Sigma Alpha and the assistance of the Union League of Anchorage, which made this lecture possible, thanks to support from the Jack Miller Center for Teaching America’s Founding Principles and History through a grant from the M. J. Murdock Charitable Trust, and our students in the UAA Political Science Association, who help to organize the lectures.
We are particularly grateful for support from our loyal lecture audience. For information about how to support next year’s Chartwell Lecture Series, please contact Professor James W. Muller, jwmuller@alaska.edu, or any faculty member in the Department of Political Science at the University of Alaska Anchorage.
Learn more about the Chartwell Lecture Series at the University of Alaska >>
This event is supported by Jack Miller Center’s Pacific Northwest Initiative: Advancing Education in America’s Founding Principles and History. Thanks to the generous grant from MJ Murdock Charitable Trust, JMC is working with faculty to organize exciting campus events in the region. The Initiative also provides programs, conferences and other opportunities for professors in the PNW—all to help them make a difference in the education of their students.
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