LATROBE, PA—Dr. Susan Mitchell Sommers, Professor of History in the School of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at Saint Vincent College, has been selected to give an endowed lectureship and teach two master classes at the Universite Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), or Free University of Brussels, in April.
The event will serve as the inaugural lecture for the Théodore Verhaegen Leerstoel Chair.
The focus of the event will be The Anderson Constitutions, which is the founding document of speculative Freemasonry. Also presenting at the event will be Professor Andrew Prescott of the University of Glasgow.
A leading scholar on Freemasons, Dr. Sommers will present her first master class, “Bringing Microhistory to Esoteric Biography: The Strange Case of Ebenezer Sibly,” on April 19 and her second, “Too Good to be True: Masonic Mythology and the Life of Thomas Dunckerley” on April 26.
Dr. Sommers will close out the event with her lecture “Our Learned Author: James Anderson of the Constitutions of the Freemasons, and his other lives.”
Prof. Prescott and Dr. Sommers do research together on Freemasonry in the 18th century, namely focusing on British Freemasonry. They are currently working on a book on James Anderson, who, in addition to being the author of the “Constitutions of the Freemasons,” was also a Presbyterian minister from Scotland.
About the Théodore Verhaegen Leerstoel Chair
Named for Pierre-Théodore Verhaegen, a Belgian lawyer and liberal politician as well as the founder of the ULB, the Théodore Verhaegen Chair is a university chair founded in 1983 with the support of the Grand Orient of Belgium. It constitutes a chair of Masonic Studies at the Free University of Brussels, organizing conferences and inviting speakers on the most diverse aspects of Freemasonry. The chair publishes its proceedings in “Le pavé mosaic,” a review of Masonic studies published by Dervy.
PHOTO: Dr. Susan Mitchell Sommers