Update: NVCC Lecture on Racial Terms In Literature to Air on CSPAN-3 [POLL][VIDEO]

Update: Because of a scheduling conflict, William H. Foster III's feature on C-SPAN never ran in January, according to Naugatuck Valley Community College Public Relations Associate Allison Egan.

The lecture will be aired at 8 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 4, and midnight Sunday, Feb. 5, on on C-SPAN’s American History TV series. The 90-minute program, titled Lectures in History: Music and the Civil Rights Movements, will air on the company station C-SPAN3.

Beginning Monday, Feb. 6, the program will be available indefinitely at the CSPAN Video Library.

Original information:

William H. Foster III, professor of English at Naugatuck Valley Community College, will be featured on C-SPAN’s American History TV series at 8 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 31, and midnight and 1 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 1.

The 90-minute program, titled Lectures in History: Music and the Civil Rights Movements, will air on the company station C-SPAN3, according to a press release from Naugatuck Valley Community College.

Foster, who is recognized internationally for his scholarship in the field of African American portrayal in media, was contacted by C-SPAN in early August as a candidate for the newly launched Lectures in History series.

As part of this program, C-SPAN visits a number of different college or university classrooms and tapes a class session in its entirety. The goal of the program is to allow C-SPAN’s audience members -- about 42 million homes -- to experience a genuine day in a class from beginning to end without interruption.

The filming, which took place on October 25, 2011, captured 30 students in a classroom discussion about censorship and literature with a focus on historicity.

Specifically, the conversation focused on the use of racially charged terms in the literary works of Samuel Clemens and Harriet Beecher Stowe.

"I saw an article about a publisher who was taking the ‘N-word’ out of 'Huckleberry Finn'," said Foster. "If the idea is to avoid controversy in the classroom, let’s take a look and see what it says about the original text. What does it say about the times? It’s a part of who we are as Americans. We, as a country, struggle with historical facts and I wanted our students to realize that. We have to know our whole history."

Foster said that is the first time he decided to teach from this angle in an introductory course.

"This is what college is for: examination," he said. "We’re examining the reason we write what we write."

Foster, a Middletown resident, is a long-time comic book collector and researcher. He has appeared on CNN and National Public Radio as a commentator on the issue of blacks in comics.

His exhibit, "The Changing Image of Blacks in Comics," has been displayed at a number of venues across the country, including Temple University’s Paley Library and the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art in New York City.

William Foster's website, Finally in Full Color, is dedicated to the research and promotion of the history of African Americans in Comics.