Sixth Annual Ropes Lecture Series

This year's topic,

Literature and the Environment

, examines issues that are both timely and universal. The series is conceived as a public forum in which lecturers develop topics that pique community interest and discussion.

The 2005 Ropes Series offers five evening lectures, all of which are free and open to the general public.

Wednesday, January 12

McMicken 127, 8:00p.m.

Lawrence Buell, who teaches at Harvard, is the dean of American eco-critics. His two most recent books are The Environmental Imagination and Writing for an Endangered World. He has also written other books about nineteenth-century American Literature.

Tuesday, January 18

McMicken 127, 8:00p.m.

Joy Williams is the author of four novels. The most recent, The Quick and the Dead, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2001. She has published two earlier collections of stories, as well as Ill Nature, a book of essays about environmental issues that was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism. She has also published a guide to the Florida Keys.

Tuesday, February 1

McMicken 127, 8:00p.m.

Richard Powers teaches at Illinois. He has published seven novels; the mostly explicitly environmental books are Gain, about a soap company that resembles P&G, and The Gold-Bug Variations, about genetics. His most recent novel, The Time of Our Singing, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction.

Monday, February 7

McMicken 127, 8:00p.m.

Cheryll Glotfelty teaches English and Environmental Studies at the University of Nevada, Reno. She is an editor of the influential Ecocriticism Reader and the author of many essays about literature and ecology. She teaches a course in Ecofeminism at Reno.

Later, attend an open class with Glotfelty, hosted by Lee Person Monday, February 7 in the Elliston Poetry Room, 11:00a.m.

Tuesday, February 22

McMicken 127, 8:00p.m.

David Quammen began his career as a novelist--The Zolta Configuration, The Soul of Viktor Tronko--before turning to science writing. He has published four books of his essays. His The Song of the Dodo received the John Burroughs Medal for natural history writing. His most recent book is Monster of God, about man-eating predators in nature and in human imagination.

Quammen will also be on a panel discussion, moderated by Kathy Rentz, Wednesday. February 23, 1:00p.m.

For directions to campus and detailed maps, please visit

www.uc.edu/directions

.

If you have any questions concerning the Ropes Lecture Series, please contact Jon Kamholtz, Director of English Graduate Studies.

Sponsored by McMicken College of Arts & Sciences, Department of English & Comparative Literature and the Charles Phelps Taft Memorial Fund.