9/14/09 Anderson selected as the 2009 Hierth Lecturer

Amanda Anderson, Hierth lecturer for 2009

• Amanda Anderson, professor of English literature and chair of the department at Johns Hopkins University, will deliver the Hierth lecturer for 2009.
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• Her lecture, “Explaining the Humanities,” will address why the humanities - in recent years - have so frequently been asked to explain their relevance and value.
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Anderson selected as the 2009 Hierth Lecturer

Amanda Anderson, professor of English literature and chair of the department at Johns Hopkins University, has been selected selected to speak at the annual Hierth Lecture and Fall Gathering . The Hierth lecture will take place Sept. 24, 2009 at 3:00 p.m. in Rudder 301.

Anderson’s lecture, entitled “Explaining the Humanities,” will address why the humanities - in recent years - have so frequently been asked to explain their relevance and value. Further, it will assess the two central directions that humanities scholars have taken in trying to justify what they do.

One approach has been to stress the general skills of argumentation provided by humanities work. Another approach stresses the traditional importance of humanities values: self-cultivation, the making of citizens, and the importance of understanding the human condition.

Amanda Anderson is the Caroline Donovan Professor of English Literature at Johns Hopkins University and chair of the department. She specializes in critical theory and 19th-century British literature and culture. She received her Ph.D. in English from Cornell University and taught at the University of Illinois before moving to Johns Hopkins University in 1999. She is the author of The Way We Argue Now: A Study in the Cultures of Theory (Princeton, 2006), The Powers of Distance: Cosmopolitanism and the Cultivation of Detachment (Princeton, 2001), and Tainted Souls and Painted Faces: The Rhetoric of Fallenness in Victorian Culture (Cornell, 1993).

The annual Hierth Lecture and Fall Gathering was established in 2004 as an opportunity for the Department of English to come together to celebrate the beginning of a new academic year. It honors Harrison E. Hierth, a long-time faculty member in the Department of English and head of the department from 1970 to 1975. The Hierth Lecture is generously supported by a gift from Robbie and Thomas C. Morris III '62.

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Contact: Tiffany Neal, varsitycolt@libarts.tamu.edu, 979.862.4879