CSS is delighted to welcome Prof. Michael S. Martin for his lecture, “Rethinking Points of Symmetry: Early American and Appalachian Studies." Prof. Martin is Associate Professor of English, Modern Languages, and Cultural Studies at Nicholls State University, located in the Bayou Region of South Louisiana. He works in the fields of nineteenth-century American literary and cultural studies, Native American Studies, Southern Studies, and Appalachian Studies. His book, Appalachian Pastoral: Mountain Excursions, Aesthetic Visions, and the Antebellum Travel Narrative, was recently published by Clemson University Press. His work has appeared in Postmodern Culture, The Nathaniel Hawthorne Review, Leviathan: A Journal of Melville Criticism, Studies in American Indian Literatures, and other journals. His new book monograph is comprised of a study of collected nineteenth-century Cherokee orature, cultural memory, and sovereignty.