Announcements

As we celebrate the 250th anniversary of the birth of Jane Austen, the Frank Banko Alehouse Cinema will host a Jane Austen Film Seminar with Dr. Michael Kramp, Professor of English at Lehigh University, on Saturday, September 27. This seminar will treat the history, global reach, and ongoing allure of Austen’s stories on screen. We will consider the various ways in which Austen’s novels and ideas have been adapted and deployed and explore the different impacts of her narratives around the world.

Saturday, September 27
11:00 A.M. – 1:00 P.M.
Venue: Frank Banko Alehouse Cinemas

Buy Tickets

Part of Jane Austen at 250: A Celebration on Screen

Dr. Michael Kramp is a Professor of English at Lehigh University, with appointments in Film and Documentary Studies and the Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Programs. His scholarship focuses on nineteenth-century British literature and culture, masculinity studies, and critical theory, with additional work in textual editing, Anthropocene Studies, and Health Humanities. He is the author of Disciplining Love: Austen and the Modern Man and Patriarchy’s Creative Resilience: Late Victorian Speculative Fiction, and has edited or co-edited several volumes, including Jane Austen and Masculinity and Jane Austen and Critical Theory.

Dr. Kramp currently leads Jane Austen and the Future of the Humanities, a multi-year public humanities initiative that uses Austen’s enduring cultural relevance to engage broader audiences in conversations about the value of humanistic study. The project includes a podcast, documentary film, public-facing monograph, and edited volume.

"Jaws" turns 50 on June 20. The anniversary will be marked with TV airings of the film and its sequels as well as a big screen re-release. Watch it once or hundreds of times and the scare seems fresh every time, said Dawn Keetley, editor of the journal Horror Studies and professor of English and film. "Sharks stand in perfectly for wild nature that’s at the edge of where humans can go, and as humans, we always push at the border," she told USA Today. "Sharks mark where we can’t go very easily, maybe where we shouldn’t go. To the dangerous and the forbidden."

Read story from USA Today

Last Thursday, Caryl Phillips visited Lehigh for a reading and discussion of his latest book, Another Man in the Street, marking the opening of Africana Studies' Distinguished Lecture-Speaker Series. 

With teaching experience at universities in Ghana, Sweden, Singapore, Barbados, India and the United States, Caryl Phillips has shared his knowledge of literature around the world. 

Last week, he brought it to Lehigh.  

Read the full article about the event from the Brown and White >

Image

Joan Anim-Addo is a writer and scholar. Her publications include Janie, Cricketing Lady (poetry); Imoinda (libretto); Longest Journey: A History of Black Lewisham, and Touching the Body: History, Language and African-Caribbean Women’s Writing. Currently Emeritus Professor and Director of the Centre for Caribbean and Diaspora Studies at Goldsmiths, University of London, she is also the UK’s first Black Professor of Literature and the Humanities. She is a Leverhulme Research Fellow. Her most recent publication is This is the Canon: Decolonize Your Bookshelf in 50 Books (co-written). She is Founder-Editor of Blacklines, the Journal of Black British Writing, and Editor-in Chief of the Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Black British Writing, 3 Volumes (forthcoming).

Public Events

March 18, 2025
An Afternoon with Joan Anim-Addo Faculty/Student Discussion 

March 20, 2025
Imoinda Speaks: Authorising the enslaved Black Woman After Aphra Behn Public Lecture

March 21, 2025
Imoinda World Premiere – A Youth Production Film Screening

Asian and Asian American Studies program hosted Peter Hessler, author and staff writer for the New Yorker, last week. His narrative non-fiction workshop about his article "Dr. Don" drew a large crowd in Linderman 200.

Image

Image

This year’s Lunar New Year celebration at Lehigh was organized by students of Asian Cultural Society (ACS). Participating student clubs brought food and traditional dishes, and each group had a chance to talk about what the foods represent in their countries. "It's a very important celebration because it gives the students memories and gives them a sense of home. And when they take part in the eating of certain foods and certain songs and then dancing, it calls back memories of activities and sights and smells that they experienced back home. So it's very important to their sense of belonging," professor Tom Chen tells Lehigh Valley News.

Read the full story from Lehigh Valley News > >

Last Thursday, Africana Studies program faculty, staff and students had a meet and greet to learn about the major and minor. The event ended with a small Kwanzaa celebration!

Image

Image

Mary Foltz and local community members establish a historical marker in Kutztown honoring LGBTQ+ artist and activist Keith Haring

Despite having lived all over the country, Mary Foltz, associate professor of English and director of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies program, has cemented the legacies and stories of many local LBGTQ+ figures through oral histories, public humanities projects and exhibitions. Foltz is the co-director of South Side Initiative (SSI) and received the ACLS Scholars and Society Fellowship thanks to all of her regional history work. The fellowship aims to bring scholars into community organizations and it allowed Foltz to work on a project to honor renowned LGBTQ+ artist and activist Keith Haring.

Read the full article on CAS news > >