Patrick Brantlinger to Speak at USU

Patrick Brantlinger, the James Rudy Professor of English at Indiana University, will speak at Utah State University at 4:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 12, in the Utah State University Haight Alumni Center. The free event is part of the Department of English Speakers Series, and all are invited.

According to USU assistant professor Shane Graham, Brantlinger is one of America’s foremost humanities scholars, having made seminal contributions to the fields of Victorian literary studies, British and American cultural studies and postcolonial studies. He is the author of eight books, including Rule of Darkness and Crusoe’s Footprints. He earned his doctorate from Harvard University, and has held Woodrow Wilson, Guggenheim and NEH fellowships.

 

Brantlinger will read Rudyard Kipling’s famous poem “The White Man’s Burden” (1899) in the context of late British imperialism, as well as of the U.S. invasion of the Philippines after the Spanish-American War (to which Kipling dedicated the poem). He will also discuss numerous parodies and other uses of the poem, such as D.W. Griffith’s film Birth of a Nation (1915) and Edmund Morel’s book The Black Man’s Burden (1920). And he will discuss recent evocations of the poem in relation to new geo-political formations and what some commentators have described as the “American Empire.”

 

Brantlinger will be interviewed on UPR 89.5 FM Oct. 12 at 9:30 a.m. The interview will repeat at 7:30 p.m.

 

The Department of English Speakers Series was established to promote the value of the arts and humanities in public life. Next up is award-winning poet George Bilgere at 12:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 19, in the USU Haight Alumni Center. For more information on the speakers series or the department of English at Utah State, call (435) 797-3858.

 

Contact: Shane Graham (435) 797-2719