Aaron Fogelman, professor of history at Northern Illinois University, will give a talk about European missionaries to the British colonies in America on Thursday, April 10, at 4 p.m. in the Edwards Recital Hall on the Coastal Carolina University campus.

The event is part of CCU's Nancy A. Smith Distinguished Visitor Series and is being held in conjunction with the university's Phi Alpha Theta spring induction ceremony. Fogelman will also be speaking at CCU's Litchfield Education Center on Friday, April 11, at 4 p.m. Both lectures are free and the public is invited.

Fogelman is the author of "Two Troubled Souls: An Eighteenth-Century Couple's Spiritual Journey in the Atlantic World" (2013). The book describes the experiences of Jean-Francois Reynier, a French Swiss Huguenot, and his wife, Maria Barbara Knoll, a Lutheran from the German territories, who risked passage across the Atlantic several times in the 1700s to minister spiritually and physically to Protestants, Jews, African slaves and Native Americans.

In his talk, Fogleman will place special emphasis on the activities of these missionaries in the Carolina-Georgia Lowcountry, offering insights on the slave system and the spiritual, medical and linguistic concerns they faced in their effort to find and spread the truth.

CCU's chapter of Phi Alpha Theta, the national honor society for history students, will induct 16 new members at the ceremony, which follows Fogelman's talk.

The Nancy A. Smith Distinguished Visitor Series was established in 2004 to bring noted artists and scholars to campus for public lectures and presentations.