Dr. Kevin L. Cope, specialist in Enlightenment theory, will give the Ida Wise East Memorial Lecture Thursday, April 3, at 7:30 p.m. in Sydnor Performance Hall, Schewel Hall at Lynchburg College.
Author of numerous publications on the Enlightenment period and the history of ideas in the 18th century, Dr. Cope is a professor of English at Louisiana State University and a visiting scholar at several colleges and universities in the United States and Europe.
Dr. Cope's lecture, "The Age of Reason, an Age of Eruptions, Some Ages of Immensity: The Future of Eighteenth-Century Values," is free and open to the public.
This lecture will look at the ways in which eighteenth-century figures incorporate the "eruptive" as a positive value and how, in doing so, they continue to make the eighteenth century seem similar or relevant to our times. This presentation will survey some of the more colorful eruptive phenomena of the period including volcanoes, which were unusually active during the century, and also the travel and scientific literature that arose from the exploration of volatile environments. Works from art, literature, and science will be considered, as well as the problem of immensity and the inability of any one discourse or method to characterize the entirety of the world.
Dr. Cope is the author of three books, In and After the Beginning: Inaugural Moments and Literary Institutions in the Long Eighteenth Century (2007), John Locke Revisited (New York: Twayne-Macmillan, 1999), Criteria of Certainty: Truth and Judgment in the English Enlightenment (1990).
The John Franklin East Professorship in the Humanities was established in May 1977 through an endowed gift to the College by Margaret East Nelson in memory of her father and in recognition of the East and Nelson family interests in humanities and fine arts. A Norfolk, Virginia, native and businessman, J.F. East served on the Lynchburg College Board of Trustees and was an early and generous benefactor to the College.