In Memory of J.D.M. Brown (1883 - 1951)
Every Spring, the English Literatures & Writing department hosts a John D. M. Brown lecture.
Dr. John D. M. Brown graduated from Muhlenberg College in 1906 and joined the Muhlenberg faculty in 1912. Dr. Brown was a remarkably versatile scholar and teacher. He taught courses not only in English and American Literature, but also in Italian, Spanish, French and Art History. Dr. Brown was especially devoted to the literature of the English Renaissance, particularly to plays and poems of Shakespeare.
Dr. Brown served as Head of the Muhlenberg English Department from 1927 to 1949. He was honored in his life-time as the first recipient of the college’s Florence T. Saeger Professorship. In addition, Wittenburg University named him a Doctor of Literature in 1922 and Muhlenberg awarded him a Doctor of Humane Letters degree in 1948, the year before his retirement from the college.
The John D. M. Brown lecture is underwritten by a generous gift by Mary E. Brown, in loving memory of her husband (1883-1951), who served as Professor of English at Muhlenberg College.
35th Guest Lecturer, Miles Grier
Miles Grier is an associate professor of English at Queens College and the Graduate Center, CUNY.
He is the author of the lnkface: Othello and White Authority in the Era of Atlantic Slavery (University of Virginia Press 2023) and co-editor of Early Modern Black Diaspora Studies (Palgrave 2018). His essays on Shakespearean material have appeared in William and Mary Quarterly and the volumes Scripturalizing the Human; The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare and Race; Shakespeare/Text; and Masquerade: Scripturalizing Modernities through Black Flesh.
Essays on more contemporary North American topics such as racial profiling after 9/11, Joni Mitchell's blackface pimp alter ego, President Obama's approach to Black voters, and playwright August Wilson's intentional marginalization of white racism have appeared in Politics and Culture, Genders the Journal of Popular Music Studies, and the LA Review of Books, respectively.
