Karen Cox, associate professor of history, recently attended a special dinner at the Executive Mansion to honor noted North Carolina authors.

Gov. Beverly Perdue and her husband Robert Eaves Jr. hosted the dinner and invited attendees, which included historians, novelists and poets currently living and working in North Carolina.

Cox, author of “Dreaming of Dixie: How the South Was Created in American Popular Culture,” said it was a privilege to be selected for the opportunity and to be honored in “such a personal way by our governor.”

Each author who attended the dinner presented a reading from a favorite work. Cox's selection was from Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s 1892 speech to the U.S. Senate Committee on Woman’s Suffrage, which reads in part: "Nature never repeats herself, and the possibilities of one human soul will never be found in another. No one has ever found two blades of ribbon grass alike, and no one will ever find two human beings alike. Seeing, then, what must be the infinite diversity in human character, we can in a measure appreciate the loss to a nation when any class of the people is uneducated and unrepresented in the government." 

Photos:

Inset, Karen Cox, right, with her mother Flora Carter, at the Executive Mansion. Above: Gov. Perdue and the invited authors and guests.