The William E. Massey, Sr., Lectures in American Studies at Harvard University have been endowed by an anonymous donor to honor Mr. Massey, the Virginia businessman and philanthropist. Mr. Massey was born in Ansted, West Virginia, in 1909 and attended the University of Richmond. At the age of twenty he began to work for the A.T. Massey Coal Company, and before his retirement in 1977 he served as chief executive officer of the company and chairman of the board. Mr. Massey was president of the Massey Foundation, a private philanthropic organization that supports cultural and educational institutions. He died on February 10, 1987.

Lectures have included:

2017, Winona LaDuke
“Climate Change, Indigenous Resistance, and Forging a New Democracy: Thoughts for the Present Moment”

2015, Linda Greenhouse
“Just a Journalist: Reflections on Journalism, Life, and the Spaces Between”

2013, Greil Marcus
“Three Songs, Three Singers, Three Nations”

2012, Gish Jen
“Tiger Writing: Art, Culture, and the Interdependent Self”

2011, Sally Mann
“If Memory Serves”

2009, Eric Foner
“The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery”

2008, Joan C. Williams
“Obama Eats Arugula and Hillary Bakes Cookies: Reshaping the Politics of Work and Family by Re-Theorizing Gender and Class”

2005, Eric Hobsbawm, Jayati Ghosh, and Carlos Monsivais
“American Empire in Global Perspective”

2003, Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown
“Architecture as Signs and Symbols: For a Mannerist Time”

2002, John Demos
“Circles and Lines: The Shape of Life in Early America”

2000, E.L. Doctorow, Maxine Hong Kingston
“Reporting the Universe” and “To Be the Poet”

1999, Arthur Miller, Joseph Dorman, Joan Micklin Silver
“History Around the Crucible”

1998, Andrew Delbanco
“The Real American Dream: A Meditation on Hope”

1997, Richard Rorty
“Achieving Our Country”

1995, Stephen L. Carter
“The Dissent of the Governed”

1994, Alfred Kazin
“Writing Was Everything”

1993, Eugene Genovese
“The Southern Tradition”

1991, Gore Vidal
“Screening History”

1990, Toni Morrison
“Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination”

1989, David Brion Davis
“Revolutions: Reflections on American Equality and Foreign Liberations”

1987, Conor Cruise O’Brien
“God Land: Reflections on Religion and Nationalism”

1986, Lawrence Levine
“Highbrow/Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America”

1985, Irving Howe
“The American Newness: Culture and Politics in the Age of Emerson”

1983, Eudora Welty
“One Writer’s Beginnings”