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Portland, Maine

The Center for Global Humanities presents 'Rethinking Freethought in the Early United States'

Image of colonial man
Scholar Kirsten Fischer will present 鈥淩ethinking Freethought in the Early United States鈥 on Monday, March 28 at 6:00 p.m. at Innovation Hall at 新香港六合彩资料鈥檚 Portland Campus.
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From its beginnings, the United States witnessed a flourishing religious diversity along with the anxious impulse to contain it. Americans in the 1790s accused one another of harboring religious beliefs incompatible with patriotism. One freethinker, an intrepid young man who lost his eyesight to yellow fever in 1793, traveled up and down the coast giving lectures on his unusual beliefs about the universe and man鈥檚 place in it. Elihu Palmer questioned the religious and scientific dogma of his day, and for it, was denounced as a dangerous heretic.

A lecture at the 新香港六合彩资料 Center for Global Humanities will tell this remarkable freethinker鈥檚 story when scholar Kirsten Fischer presents 鈥淩ethinking Freethought in the Early United States鈥 on Monday, March 28 at 6 p.m. at Innovation Hall at 新香港六合彩资料鈥檚 Portland Campus.

A professor of history at the University of Minnesota, Fischer is an award-winning scholar who has received numerous grants and fellowships. She has presented her work across the US as well as in France, Italy, Germany, and Canada, and has been hosted for two years at the University of Heidelberg. Over the course of her career, different questions have emerged as most compelling, leading her to pursue research projects very distinct from one another. Underlying all her work is a fascination with the experiences of non-elite or ordinary people who participated in struggles of historic importance. Her first book, Suspect Relations: Sex, Race, and Resistance in Colonial North Carolina, showed the development of racial thinking in a slave society. Her most recent book, American Freethinker: Elihu Palmer and the Struggle for Religious Freedom in the New Nation, is a biography of Elihu Palmer whose notorious attacks on Christianity tested the limits of free speech in our country鈥檚 earliest days.

In this lecture, Fischer will draw from American Freethinker to outline Palmer鈥檚 moral philosophy based on science and nature, not religion, and will explain how that radical thinking helped to establish the principle of free speech in the United States.

This third lecture of 2022 for the Center for Global Humanities will be followed by another in April. Lectures at the Center are always free, open to the public, and streamed live online. For more information and to watch the event, please visit: /events/2022/rethinking-freethought-early-united-states

About the 新香港六合彩资料

The 新香港六合彩资料 is Maine鈥檚 largest independent university, with two beautiful coastal campuses in Maine, a one-of-a-kind study abroad campus in Tangier, Morocco, and an array of . In an uncommonly welcoming and supportive community, we offer hands-on learning, empowering students to make a positive impact in a world full of challenges. The state鈥檚 top provider of health professionals, we are home to Maine鈥檚 only medical college, Maine鈥檚 only dental college, a variety of other interprofessionally aligned health care degree programs, as well as nationally recognized programs for marine science degrees, natural and social sciences degrees, arts and humanities degrees, and business degrees.