Documentary Filmmaker Ken Burns Schedules Visit

Award-winning filmmaker Ken Burns, who has created such epic documentary series as The Civil War, Baseball, and Jazz, will share his expertise with students and faculty in the Roy H. Park School of Communications during a three-day stay on campus. This year’s guest in the Park Distinguished Visitors Series, Burns will also deliver a free public lecture on Thursday, December 6. His talk, "Sharing the American Experience," is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. in the Emerson Suites, Phillips Hall.

Burns had been scheduled to visit the College in October, but his appearance was postponed because of a family emergency. While on campus December 4–6, he will discuss his craft in journalism, film, and television-radio classes and give master classes on "American Lives: Use of Biography in Documentary Films," "Original Sin: Race in American History," and "Documentary as Career."

The historian Stephen Ambrose has said, "More Americans get their history from Ken Burns than any other source." Among his dozens of industry accolades, Burns has earned two Emmy Awards, two Grammy Awards, a producer of the year citation from the Producers Guild of America, a People’s Choice Award, and a Peabody Award. His latest work, a biography of Mark Twain, will air on PBS in 2002.

The highest-rated series in American public television history, Burns’s The Civil War drew an audience of 40 million viewers for its 1990 premiere. His 1994 Baseball used archival photographs and newsreel footage to portray the history of the sport as a mirror of American society. Concluding a unique trilogy of American life and culture, his 10-part Jazz followed this art form from its origins in blues and ragtime through swing, bebop, and fusion.

The Park Distinguished Visitors Series is made possible by a grant from the Park Foundation. Past visitors have been Jeff Greenfield, political analyst for CNN; Bob Brown, ABC News correspondent; P. J. O’Rourke, best-selling author and leading political satirist; Clarence Page, Pulitzer Prize–winning columnist; and Carole Simpson, ABC News anchor and senior correspondent.