Calendar of Events
Calendar of Events
Calendar of Events
Monday, February 18, 2008
"Total War, Modernism and Encyclopedic Form"
Main Lounge, Moulton Union
4:45 - 6:00 p.m.
Open to the public
Associate Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania, Paul K. Saint-Amour's work demonstrates some of the best interdisciplinary approaches in the literary field. This talk will offer an account of modernist masterpieces: that they drew less on the epic tradition than on the encyclopedia, a multi-voiced genre long imagined as conserving human knowledge against the possibility of its catastrophic loss.
Billy Bean "Going the Other Way"
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
7:30 p.m., Main Lounge, Moulton Union
Reception to follow
Billy Bean played major league baseball from 1987 to 1995. After years of living secretly, he came out publicly in 1999. His story was front-page news in The New York Times, and subsequently on a nationally televised feature with Diane Sawyer. He is the only living former major league baseball player to acknowledge his homosexuality. He has been working actively to try and dispel the myth and stereotypes that follow people of diversity.
Sponsored by the departments of English, Gay and Lesbian Studies, Gender and Women's Studies, and Athletics; Health Services; Counseling Service; Bowdoin Queer Straight Alliance; and the Queer-Trans Resource Center.
Open to the public and free of charge.
Bowdoin Alumnus,
Jason Brown Reading
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
4:00 p.m., Lancaster Lounge, Moulton Union
Jason Brown grew up in Maine and is a 1991 graduate of Bowdoin College. His first book of short stories, Driving the Heart and Other Stories, was published in 1999. His second collection of short stories, Why the Devil Chose New England For His Work, will be published in November of 2007 by Open City/Grove Atlantic.
This event is sponsored by the English Department.
October 24, 2007
7:30 p.m., Daggett Lounge, Thorne Hall
Tom Shippey - "Filming the Lord of the Rings: How Peter Jackson Coped with J.R.R. Tolkien."
Professor Tom Shippey says he started writing on the works of J.R.R. Tolkien out of "piety and annoyance." Piety, because Shippey's teaching career brought him to Oxford in the 1970s, where he taught Old and Middle English using the syllabus that Tolkien had set down, and then to Leeds to the Chair of English Language and Medieval English Literature that Tolkien had once held. Annoyance, because his familiarity with Tolkien's scholarly and intellectual background allowed him to see the shortcomings of much of the work on Tolkien coming out in the 1970s -- the authors didn't have the training to understand the philological and literary traditions that were such strong influences on Tolkien's work. Shippey's academic background and his long interest in fantasy and science fiction uniquely prepared him to write the first first-rate study of Tolkien's work, and he has led the field of Tolkien Studies since.
Shippey's book The Road to Middle Earth: How J.R.R. Tolkien Created a New Mythology has been in print since 1982 and is now out in a revised and expanded edition. In 2000, he published J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century, and he is the author of a long list of articles on Tolkien. Besides his work on Tolkien, Shippey has published widely on Anglo-Saxon and Medieval English Literature as well as on modern fantasy and science fiction. He has held the Walter J. Ong Chair of the Humanities at St. Louis University in Missouri since 1993.
Open to the public and free of charge
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
7:30 p.m. Thorne Hall, Daggett Lounge
Reception to follow
Zakes Mda - CION: A Novel
"South Africa's young writers admire enormously those who helped dismantle apartheid. For many, the godfather of that generation is Zakes Mda, who at 58 is one of the most prominent black novelists in South African history. A celebrated playwright during the struggle years, Mda has published five novels since 1995 and won every literary prize offered in South Africa. . . . Mda may have a more central place in South Africa’s literary and political spheres than any other novelist today." (Rachel Donadio, New York Times)
Zakes Mda will speak at Bowdoin as part of his nation-wide book tour. Mda’s first novel, Ways of Dying (1997) about a "professional mourner" named Toloki in post-apartheid South Africa, won the Commonwealth Writers Prize. Mda’s talk will focus on his latest release Cion, the sequel to Ways of Dying, which follows Toloki on his journey to the United States. Mda’s other acclaimed novels include The Whale Caller, The Madonna of Excelsior, and The Heart of Redness.
Sponsored by the English Department and Africana Studies.
Open to the public and free of charge