Hamilton-Williams Campus Center | Benes Rooms A&B

Ohio Wesleyan professor Michael Flamm will present “OWU at War: Charles Leighton and the Memphis Belle.” 

“Eighty years ago, the Memphis Belle safely completed 25 missions over Europe. The B-17 bomber then became the focus of a war bond tour, the subject of a celebrated documentary film, and the most famous plane of World War II,” Flamm says. “The crew’s navigator was Charles Leighton, an Ohio Wesleyan chemistry major and football player who enlisted after Pearl Harbor.” Flamm’s multimedia presentation will explore Leighton’s life and honor his service to his country.

Flamm is the author or co-author of five books on modern U.S. history. At Ohio Wesleyan, where he has taught since 1998, he has received the Welch Award for Scholarly Achievement (2022) and three teaching prizes including the University’s highest honor, the Bishop Herbert Welch Meritorious Teaching Award (2012). Flamm is a Fulbright Scholar and has served as a faculty consultant to the National Endowment for the Humanities, the College Board, and the National Academy of Sciences. From 2019 to 2022 he was an elected member of the executive board of the Organization of American Historians, the largest professional association dedicated to the teaching and study of U.S. history.

Flamm’s presentation will be Ohio Wesleyan’s 2022-2023 Joseph and Edith Vogel Lecture sponsored by the Department of History. The Vogel Lecture is made possible through an endowment from their son, Ezra F. Vogel, Ph.D., now deceased. Ezra Vogel was a 1950 Ohio Wesleyan graduate, retired professor of East Asian Studies at Harvard University, and author of the critically acclaimed book, “Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China.”