Faculty lecture to focus on William Faulkner and pop culture
McKillop Library will host another virtual event for its ongoing faculty lecture series for the 20-21 academic year. The lecture, entitled “Taking Popular Culture Seriously, or, How I Learned to Love ‘Hack’ Faulkner” is by Dr. Matthew Ramsey, associate professor of English and chairman of the Department of English, Communications and Media, and it will be held on Monday, Oct. 19, from 4-5:30 p.m.
To register for the online event, to go the event’s page on the library’s website, scroll down to the bottom of the page, and click on the “Begin Registration” button.
Dr. Ramsey examines the work of the renowned Nobel Prize-winning, Southern author William Faulkner and his intersections with popular culture. To illustrate issues regarding the canon, literary snobbery or assumptions about Southern white male authors, Dr. Ramsey employs examples of film, novels and other works.
The examples Dr. Ramsey will be discussing include a Saturday Evening Post all-male war story transformed into a Joan Crawford melodrama, a “scandalous” Pre-Code Hollywood film about rape and murder, and the film “The Long, Hot Summer” — which embodies the queerness of 1950s Southern melodramas.
Dr. Matthew Ramsey is an associate professor of English and chair of the Department of English, Communications and Media at Salve Regina University. He received his PhD in Literature and Film Studies from The Ohio State University, and he has published widely on William Faulkner’s work in journals such as The Faulkner Journal and Mississippi Quarterly, and in collections of essays including “Faulkner and Material Culture, William Faulkner: Critical Insights, A Critical Companion to William Faulkner,” and “Queering the South on Screen.”
Register for the online faculty lecture at the library’s event page, and find a listing of upcoming events from McKillop Library here. For any additional questions, please contact Gretchen Sotomayer at gretchen.sotomayor@salve.edu.
