Michael North delivers the John D.M. Brown Lecture
Named for an alumnus and former faculty member, the Brown Lecture brings a major literary critic to campus every springMonday, March 23, 2015 00:16 PM
Michael North, literary critic and professor of English at the University of California, Los Angeles, will deliver the 28th annual John D.M. Brown lecture at Muhlenberg College. His talk, "Narrative and the 'Unexplained Instant,'" will take place on Wednesday, March 25, 2015, in the Seegers Union Great Room at 7:00 p.m. This event, sponsored by the department of English, is free and open to the public. A reception will precede the lecture at 6:30 p.m.
After receiving his B.A. at Stanford University, Michael North attended the University of Connecticut, where he was granted the Ph.D. in 1980. Since that time, he has taught at the College of William and Mary and the University of California, Los Angeles, where he has held the rank of Professor since 1991. The primary focus of his teaching and scholarship is the Anglophone literature of the last hundred years, with particular concentration on race, politics and the visual arts. In addition to the books listed below, he has published articles on modern art, literature and politics in journals including Critical Inquiry, American Literary History, American Literature, PMLA and Contemporary Literature.
He has received a Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, a UC President's Research Fellowship, the Modernist Studies Association Book Prize (2006), the Robert Motherwell Book Award (2014) and the Norman Foerster Award for the best article to appear in American Literature (1983). In 2012, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Every spring semester, the Muhlenberg College English department hosts a major literary critic who visits campus for a day, gives a lecture and participates in classes.
Dr. John D. M. Brown graduated from Muhlenberg College in 1906 and joined the Muhlenberg faculty in 1912. 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. Brown was especially devoted to the literature of the English Renaissance, particularly to the plays and poems of Shakespeare.
Brown served as head of the Muhlenberg English Department from 1927 to 1949. He was honored in his lifetime as the first recipient of the college’s Florence T. Saeger Professorship. In addition, Wittenberg 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.
Founded in 1848, Muhlenberg is a highly selective, private, four-year college located in the Lehigh Valley of eastern Pennsylvania, affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America. Muhlenberg offers programs in the liberal arts and sciences, along with selected pre-professional studies and a number of interdisciplinary majors.
