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The ������̳ honors the memory of its founding chancellor with another installment of the Homer L. Hitt Presidential Distinguished Lecture. The event is set for Tuesday, Oct. 30 at 7 p.m. at the University Center and features the recipient of the 2012 BMI Woody Guthrie Fellowship, Mark F. Fernandez.

Fernandez earned two degrees in history from the ������̳ before being named the Patricia Carlin O'Keefe Distinguished Professor of History at Loyola ������̳. He has written extensively about the history of early American law. His second book, “From Chaos to Continuity: The Evolution of Louisiana's Judicial System, 1712-1862”, won the Louisiana Literary Award in 2002. In 2012 Fernandez received the Woody Guthrie Fellowship from BMI music publishers to begin research on his current book project “The Intentional Troubadour: Woody Guthrie's Travels Through the Twentieth Century.” His most recent essay, “The Only Way I Could Cry: Woody Guthrie and the Writing of 'Balladsongs,'” appeared in the Woody Guthrie Annual in January 2018. Fernandez is also a singer songwriter and performs regularly in ������̳.

His lecture will be “’Ruination Day’ in History and Music: Abraham Lincoln, the Titanic, Black Sunday, Woody Guthrie, and Gillian Welch.” The lecture is free and open to the public.

Homer L. Hitt, founding chancellor of the ������̳, led the institution with the conviction that “[e]xposure to new ideas and the opportunity to be involved in discourse about them are among the most important aspects of the university experience.” The Founders Club of the ������̳, a group of longtime faculty and staff members, hosts the lecture series and an annual luncheon event.