Union scholar's topic: American history through folk music

?Life Flows on in Endless Song: American History through Folk Songs,? will be presented by Robert Wells, professor of history at Union College, at 4 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 13, in Emerson Auditorium, Palamountain Hall. Admission is free and open to the public.

A visiting professor at Skidmore this fall through the Mellon Foundation exchange program, Wells teaches a course that combines his interests in social history and folk songs. He has had an interest in folk music since he was a high school student. The course took root while Wells was a Fulbright scholar in Denmark, and the topic will be more fully explored in a book that will be published next year by the University of Illinois Press.

Wells, who earned a PhD degree at Princeton, joined the Union College faculty in 1969 and is currently the college?s Chauncey H. Winters Professor of History. His teaching interests include American colonial history, the American Revolution, demographic trends and influences, death in American culture, and folk songs. Read more about Wells's research here.

He is the author of six books, including Facing the ?King of Terrors?: Death and Society in an American Community, 1750-1990 (Cambridge, 2000), an examination of the changes in the roles and perceptions of death in Schenectady, N.Y., over 200 years; and Revolutions in Americans' Lives: A Demographic Perspective on the History of Americans, Their Families, and Their Society, Vol. 6 (Greenwood, 1982), an interpretation of American history from a demographic perspective.

A reception with light refreshments will follow the talk. The event is sponsored by Skidmore's History Department.