Otey Scruggs Memorial Lecture

The History Department presents the annual Otey Scruggs Memorial Lecture. 

Jamie Kreiner is professor of history at the University of Georgia. Her research, which ranges from political elites to pigs, has received prizes from multiple professional academic societies as well as coverage in various popular press outlets, including Time, People, WIRED, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and the New Yorker. 

We are not alone in our distraction. Even early Christian monks—women and men who had emphatically given up nearly everything in order to concentrate on God—still found themselves struggling to concentrate. But rather than surrender in desperation, they devoted considerable creative energy to find ways to fight back. This lecture surveys the interlocking strategies that monks developed to deal with distraction, to come to grips with a complex world in which their minds couldn’t stop moving.