Dr. Michael Bellamy first lecturer of this year's English Colloquium Series
St. Thomas English professor Dr. Michael Bellamy is the first lecturer in this year's English Department Colloquium Series.
Bellamy's talk, from 3:30 to 5 p.m. Friday, Sept. 21, in the O'Shaughnessy Room (Room 108) of O'Shaughnessy-Frey Library Center, is titled "Hawthorne's Disillusioned Grunts: Doing History or Keeping the Curse of Vietnam, Iraq and Other Miscellaneous Adventures."
Everyone's invited, and light refreshments will be served.
Bellamy's abstract: "The American nightmare in Iraq has for some time felt like a post-traumatic flashback to Vietnam. Quagmire? Quicksand? What's the difference? This tendency to repeat the past is especially evident when we do not know it. How can we learn from our mistakes, instead of just repeating them in what Freud called the repetition compulsion? The parabolic fiction that resulted from Nathaniel Hawthorne's historical research into the origins of American mythology provides especially revealing insight about our current national dilemma. His tales, especially 'Young Goodman Brown' and 'Roger Malvin's Burial,' consider the implications of mystifying history in familiar fabrications of American mythology, a mythology best summed up by the dogma of American Exeptionalism, the creed that American, having been Providentially Chosen, is not like other (selfish) nations."
Mark your calendar for other English colloquia this fall:
- 3:30-5 p.m. Friday, Oct. 19: "Is Collaboratin a Viable Model for Teaching and Learning in Today's Academy?" with Anna Gajdel and Nicole Willette, Dr. Erika Scheurer and Dr. Sherry Jordon
- 3:30-5 p.m. Friday, Nov. 16: "Intertextuality and the Representations of 'Us' and 'Them': Constructing Nationalist Ideologies in News Discourse."
Questions? Call the English Department, (651) 962-5600.
