The Averitt Lectures

2007 Averitt Lecture Series

The Seventeenth Annual Jack N. and Addie D. Averitt Lectures will be given by Dr. Alfred Bendixen, Professor of English at Texas A & M University and Executive Director of the American Literature Association. Dr. Bendixen will speak on Tuesday and Wednesday, October 16th and 17th, in the Assembly Hall of the Nessmith-Lane Continuing Education Building on the campus of Georgia Southern University. The lectures are made possible through the vision and generosity of Dr. Jack Averitt and his late wife, Addie. For further information, please contact Dr. Caren Town at (912) 681-5803 or Dr. Patricia Price at (912) 681-0154.

Tuesday, October 16th , 7 p.m.: Ghosts and Demons: Sources of Terror in American Literature and Culture

This lecture focuses on the American Supernatural Tale, a genre that has been unjustly neglected by scholars even though the supernatural is central to much of the best American writing, including the works of Irving, Poe, Hawthorne, and Henry James. Dr. Bendixen argues that fear is most interesting when it is culturally specific, that the sources of terror in American writing are different from British or European uses of the Gothic, and that an examination of the specific kinds of terror which mark American writing will tell us much about the distinctive features of American culture.

The Tuesday evening talk will be preceded by a reception at 6 p.m.

Wednesday, October 17th, 10 a.m.: Washington Irving's Tales of the Supernatural and the Invention of American Culture

An exploration of the ways in which Irving's supernatural tales ("Rip Van Winkle," "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," and "The Devil and Tom Walker") established many of the basic themes and techniques that shaped the development of the American Gothic.

The Wednesday morning talk will be preceded by coffee at 9:30 a.m.

Wednesday, October 17th, 2 p.m.: Sources of Terror in Henry James' “The Turn of the Screw”

An analysis of the multiple sources of terror (social, sexual, and linguistic) that form James's greatest ghost story.

Biography of Dr. Bendixen:

Alfred Bendixen is Professor of English at Texas A&M University, where his courses cover the entire range of American writing. He is the founder of the American Literature Association, and he currently serves as its Executive Director. Much of his scholarship focuses on the recovery of unjustly neglected literary texts, especially by women writers, and the
exploration of neglected genres, including the ghost story, detective fiction, science fiction, and travel writing. His books include Haunted Women (1985), an edition of the composite novel, The Whole Family (1986), "The Amber Gods" and other stories by Harriet Prescott Spofford, (1989), and Edith Wharton: New Critical Essays (1992). He is the associate editor of the Continuum Encyclopedia of American Literature (1999) and one of the five contributing editors to the forthcoming Wadsworth Anthology of American Literature, which will appear this Fall. He is also the co-editor of the forthcoming Cambridge Companion to American Travel Writing (scheduled for publication in March 2008). He is currently completing the editing of the Blackwell Companion to the American Novel, co-editing the Blackwell Companion to the American Short Story (with Professor James Nagel) and writing the volume on American literary realism for the new Blackwell Literary History of the United States.

Dr. Alfred Bendixen