Margaret Scanlan to launch VCU's Literature, Crisis and Community Lecture and Reading Series

This fall, Virginia Commonwealth University's Department of English and University Honors Program will launch a yearlong series of lectures, readings and other events organized around the general topic of Literature, Crisis and Community.  The wide-ranging series will investigate the role that literature, broadly defined, plays in creating community and negotiating conflict. 

Guests include the distinguished scholars Dennis Kezar, Andrea Lundsford and Rey Chow; acclaimed writers Toni Morrison, Raymond Federman and John Kinsella; and the celebrated photographer Wendy Ewald.  They will be addressing such topics as literature as an agent of social change, the role of literature in the English and American civil wars, literature's role in creating national and transnational communities, the creation of communities of writers in the classroom and in new media such as the internet, and the future of the humanities, among others.

All events are free and open to the public, although the two Morrison events, co-sponsored by the University of Richmond, require advance tickets. 

On the eve of the anniversary of the 9/11 tragedy and to begin this series, noted author and critic Margaret Scanlan will speak on "The Literary Response to Terrorism."  Dr. Scanlan's talk will take place on Tuesday, September 10 at 7:30 p.m. in the School of Business auditorium, 1015 Floyd Avenue. 

Margaret Scanlan is chair and professor of English at Indiana University, South Bend, where she has taught since 1976.  She received her Ph.D. in 1972 from the University of Iowa, and is the author of “Traces of Another Time: History and Politics in Postwar British Fiction” (1990) and, more recently, “Plotting Terror:  Novelists and Terrorists in Contemporary Fiction” (2001).  She has long been interested in the literary depictions of terrorism and terrorists in modern fiction, and has written extensively on the political troubles in Ireland, among other related topics.  As Professor Scanlan has written, "literature can look terrorism in the eye and measure its human consequences." 

The public will find more information about the series by consulting the Literature, Crisis and Community Web site at www.has.vcu.edu/eng/lcc/ or by calling (804) 828-1331.