After creating a renowned exhibition about William Shakespeare and Jane Austen, Dr. Kristina Straub will come to University of Lynchburg to speak about how much fun she had.
Dr. Straub will present “Curating Will & Jane, or, Humanities Scholarship Can be Fun” in the Hopwood Hall Auditorium on Sunday, March 26, 2017, at 7:30 p.m. It is free and open to the public.
The talk will elaborate upon her recent work on “Will & Jane: Shakespeare, Austen, and the Cult of Celebrity,” an exhibition at the Folger Library, home to the world’s largest Shakespeare collection. The exhibition showcased the way the authors and their writings were popularized and celebrated in collectibles, fashion, and adaptations. Items in the exhibition included both serious porcelain representations of Austen characters and a Shakespeare bobblehead doll, among many other items. A New York Times review of the exhibit claims that it “mixes deep scholarship with serious whimsy.”
Last semester, Dr. Beth Savage took a class of Westover Honors students to view the exhibition. Chelsea Shultis ’18, who considers Jane Austen one of her idols, was thrilled by the opportunity. “Being able to see other people appreciate them as much as I do was like being a kid going to Disney World,” she said.
After seeing the exhibition, Dr. Savage suggested Dr. Straub as the speaker for the annual Ida Wise East Memorial Lecture.
Dr. Straub is a professor of Literary and Cultural Studies at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
The Ida Wise East Lecture series at University of Lynchburg was established in 1979 by an endowment gift from Margaret East Nelson of Norfolk, Va., in memory of her mother, Ida Wise East, and in recognition of the lifelong interest of the East and Nelson families in the humanities.
