Wilkes-Barre, Pa., January 20, 2023—King’s College will host the Anthracite Heritage Foundation (AHF)’s public program, The Annual Msgr. John J. Curran Lecture, featuring speaker Philip Mosley, on Thursday, January 26, 2023, at 5:30 p.m. in the Richard Abbas Alley Center for Health Sciences on Public Square.
The evening’s program, presented as part of Anthracite Mining Heritage Month, begins with a welcome address by Rev. Thomas P. Looney, C.S.C., Ph.D., president of King’s College, and Bob Wolensky, Anthracite Heritage Foundation. The welcome will also include the presentation of local artist Sue Hand’s painting of the Dorrance Colliery Breaker, which once stood near King’s College.
Following the welcome will be a presentation and lecture at 6:30 p.m. by Philip Mosely, Professor Emeritus, The Pennsylvania State University-Scranton, on his book Telling of the Anthracite: A Pennsylvania Posthistory (Sunbury Press). The lecture will be moderated by Thomas Mackaman, Associate Professor of History, King’s College. Light refreshments will be provided.
Mosley’s book is the first about how the Pennsylvania anthracite story is told in the postindustrial age and places this discourse in the broader context of environmental and socioeconomic change. It explores the various ways in which anthracite history has been represented and remembered since 1960, the chosen date for the start of the “posthistorical” era coinciding approximately with the Knox mine disaster (1959) and the beginning of the Centralia mine fire (1962-), two cataclysmic and fateful events that symbolize the beginning of the end for widescale deep anthracite mining in northeastern Pennsylvania.
The event is free and open to the public, and no registration is required. Guests can park in the lot behind the Alley Center and gather in the building’s lobby.
The program is sponsored by the AHF and the King’s College McGowan Center for Ethics and Social Responsibility. For more information about the AHF, please visit ahfdn.org.