Dr. James Odum, professor of history at East Tennessee State University, will present the Harold Holmes Dugger Lecture on April 23 at Southeast Missouri State University.

Odum's presentation is titled, "In Defense of Academic Generalism." The lecture is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. in the University Center Missouriana-Indian Room. The presentation is free and open to the public.

A dinner at 6:30 p.m. will precede the lecture.

Odum also will lead a Common Hour discussion at 12:30 p.m. on April 22 titled, "The Varieties of 1492 (Or It Matters Who is Telling the Story)." The Common Hour presentation will be held in Crisp Hall's Dempster Auditorium.

Odum was an assistant professor at Southeast from 1968 to 1970.

Odum has been active in and is a former president of the East Tennessee State University Faculty Senate. The school is in Johnson City.

He is a former chairman and vice chairman of the Tennessee Humanities Council.

He holds a bachelor of arts degree in history-political science and Spanish from Birmingham-Southern College and master's and doctoral degrees in history from the University of Georgia.

The Dugger Lecture Series was established by the history department at Southeast in 1988 to honor Harold Holmes Dugger, who taught history at the school and chaired the department.