The Assassination of John F. Kennedy: 60 Years Later

John F. Kennedy, our youngest president, began the New Frontier, saw the launching of the Peace Corps, the rise of the civil rights movement, and the first American in space, but soon also saw the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, the Cuban missile crisis, and growing problems in Viet Nam. On January 22, 1963, Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. The official Warren Commission declared that the lone shooter was Lee Harvey Oswald, himself killed by club owner, Jack Ruby. What followed was a flood of alternate theories embodied in researched arguments, films, and novels. This panel will explore the impact and aftermath of these events. Who was Kennedy and who killed him?
Presentor Bios:
Dr. Richard Vela is a professor in the Department of English, Theatre, and World Languages. On November 22, 1963, he was a sophomore at the University of Dallas and had planned on seeing President Kennedy as he left the Trade Mart on his way to Love Field Airport. He is familiar with Dealey Plaza and other sites in downtown Dallas that figure in the Kennedy story. At UNCP since January 1971, he has taught courses in Shakespeare, Latino Literature, British Literature, and film. He has won the Board of Governors Award for Teaching Excellence, the Ford Foundation fellowship, the Danforth Foundation fellowship, a National Endowment of the Arts fellowship, and other awards. His main area of publication has been Shakespeare, having coauthored Shakespeare into Film (2002), written the Shakespeare articles in The Encyclopedia of Orson Wells (2003), an article on Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet in Apocalyptic Shakespeare (2009), and forty more essays, as well as having presented over 140 conference papers, including a paper this October on the JFK assassination at a popular culture conference in New Orleans, LA.
Dr. Ryan K. Anderson is a Professor in the Department of History. His scholarly and teaching endeavors focus on the building of a nuanced understanding of how “regular” people matter as historical actors. Frank Merriwell and the Fiction of All-American Boyhood (U of Arkansas Press, 2015), his first book, explored how Progressive Era Americans remade boyhood for the 20th century. He teaches courses for all UNCP undergraduates with titles like "Growing Up American," "The History of Rock n' Roll," "The Gilded Age and Progressive Era," and "Interwar America," as well as the modern American survey.
Dr. Misti Nicole Harper is the assistant professor of African American history in the Department of History. Her scholarship and teaching center the agency of Black Americans in their own economic, political, and social liberation. She is the author of Crossing the Deep River: An Introduction to African American History (Kendall Hunt Publishing, 2023) and Ladies of Little Rock: Black Femininity and Respectability Politics in the Fight to Desegregate Central High School (University of Georgia Press, 2025). Harper teaches a number of courses in African and African American history and studies, including "Introduction to African American History, 1500-present," "Introduction to African American Studies," "The Civil Rights Movement," and "History of Sub-Saharan Africa."