Each year The Center for Arts and Culture Partnerships at the University of Louisville sponsors a conference loosely centered on the history of Louisville, Kentucky and the Upper South. We are now in our fourth year and the latter years of the Civil War and the Reconstruction era is our focus this year. I am proud of the outstanding line-up of speakers. We are especially pleased that Barbara Fields, Professor of History at Columbia University is this year's keynote. A 1968 graduate of Harvard College, Professor Fields was one of C. Vann Woodward's last doctoral students at Yale University.