Noted historian Alan Brinkley, PhD, will present the keynote address for “Celebrating Our Books, Recognizing Our Authors,” Washington University’s ninth annual faculty book colloquium, at 4:30 p.m. Monday, Nov. 29.
The event also will feature presentations by two faculty members. Anca E. Parvulescu, PhD, assistant professor of English in Arts & Sciences, is author of Laughter: Notes on a Passion (2010).
William E. Wallace, PhD, the Barbara Murphy Bryant Distinguished Professor of Art History & Archaeology in Arts & Sciences, is author most recently of Michelangelo: The Artist, the Man and his Times and The Treasures of Michelangelo (both 2010).
In addition, the colloquium will include a panel discussion on “The Future of the University Library” beginning at 1 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 30.
Panelists will be Charles J. Henry, PhD, president of the Council on Library and Information Resources; Shirley Baker, vice chancellor for scholarly resources and dean of Washington University Libraries; William E. Buhro, PhD, the George E. Pake Professor and chair of chemistry in Arts & Sciences; and Dolores Pesce, PhD, professor and chair of music in Arts & Sciences.
Both events are free and open to the public and take place in the Ann W. Olin Women’s Building Formal Lounge. Each will be immediately followed by a reception and book signing, and the Formal Lounge will contain a display of faculty books published in the last five years. In addition, faculty books will be displayed and available for purchase in the Washington University Campus Store.
“Celebrating Our Books” is organized by the Center for the Humanities in Arts & Sciences and the Washington University Libraries. The Women’s Building is located just north of Olin Library, on the university’s Danforth Campus. Seating is limited. RSVPs are encouraged.
For more information or to request a parking sticker, call (314) 935-5576 or e-mail cenhum@wustl.edu.
Brinkley is the Allan Nevins Professor of American History at Columbia University. He specializes in the history of the United States during 20th-century America.
Published works include Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin, and the Great Depression (1982), which won the 1983 National Book Award; The Unfinished Nation: A Concise History of the American People (1992); The End of Reform: New Deal Liberalism in Recession and War (1995); Liberalism and Its Discontents (1998); Franklin Delano Roosevelt (2009); and, most recently, The Publisher: Henry Luce and His American Century (2010).
Parvulescu’s research and teaching interests include 20th-century literature, modernity and modernism, literary and critical theory, narrative and the novel, and gender and feminist studies. Laughter attempts to extricate laughter from theories of the comic, humor, jokes and the grotesque, redirecting attention from the normative aesthetics of the smiling face to the burst of laughter itself.
Wallace
Wallace has published extensively on Renaissance art and architecture and is an internationally recognized authority on Michelangelo and his contemporaries.
In addition to more than 80 articles and essays, he is author and editor of six books on Michelangelo, including the award-winning Michelangelo: The Complete Sculpture, Painting and Architecture (1998), Michelangelo: Selected Scholarship in English (1996) and Michelangelo at San Lorenzo: The Genius as Entrepreneur (1994).