September 30, 1997
Contact: Louise Snider, 619/594-5204
There’s more to reading than meets the eye, says noted scholar
Literary scholar Denis Donoghue, the author and editor of more than two dozen books, including studies of Emily Dickinson, W.B. Yeats, and Jonathan Swift, will deliver the fifth annual John R. Adams Lecture in Humanities at San Diego State University.
The lecture, "The Practice of Reading," also the title of Dr. Donoghue’s latest book, will be presented at 1 p.m. on Friday, October 10, in Casa Real at SDSU.
Donoghue is concerned with all that reading entails. It is not just a matter of understanding words, he says; reading involves interpreting, imagining, construing and the underlying assumptions an individual brings to the act of reading.
Donoghue is the Henry James Professor of English and American Letters at New York University. He has taught and held lectureships at many distinguished universities, including Cambridge, Glasgow, Princeton, and Harvard.
He currently is working on a book on T.S. Eliot and another one, tentatively titled "The Tragic Generation," that will be the subject of the Alexander Lectures at the University of Toronto in October 1998.
Donoghue’s lecture is sponsored by SDSU’s Department of Classics and Humanities and is open to the public. Refreshments will follow the presentation.
The Adams Lectures were established at the University by a grant from Dr. Adams, late Professor Emeritus of English and chair of the former Division of Humanities. For further information, call the Department of Classics and Humanities at 619/594-5186.