Carol Rifelj Faculty Lecture - Cates Baldridge: "Reading ‘Against the Grain’—Putting Literature on a Paleo Diet"

Cates Baldridge, Department of English and American Literatures, will give a talk as part of the 2019-20 Carol Rifelj Faculty Lecture Series.

Where anthropologists once spoke of an Agricultural Revolution that replaced our precarious nomadic existence with the benefits of food security and the safety of a sedentary life, they now posit an Agricultural Trap which condemned hitherto happy and well-fed hunter-gatherers to the miseries of crowding, disease, drudgery, social inequality, and spiritual impoverishment.  When one overlays this new understanding upon certain works of literature, interesting things sometimes happen, and passages that previously seemed cryptic and odd can suddenly fall into a new and clearer pattern.  We will read several works—by Coetzee, Emily Bronte, and perhaps some others - “against the grain” to see what emerges.

Refreshments will be served.