The eminent historian, New Yorker staff writer, and podcast host Jill Lepore will be delivering a lecture hosted by Emory’s Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry this Thursday, February 25 at 6 p.m. The title of her lecture is “The End of Knowledge: How Data Killed Facts.” The English department’s Professors Laura Otis and Dan Sinykin, along with WGSS faculty member and Executive Associate Dean of Emory College Carla Freeman, will be respondents to the lecture.
2020 English honors student Dylan Schellenberg was awarded highest honors for his thesis, “A Retinal Twitch, A Misfired Nerve Cell: The Neurocybernetics of The Crying of Lot 49,” and an article-length reworking of the thesis will now be published in the journal, Critique: Studies in Contemporary Literature!
Dylan graduated last May with a double major in English and Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology. His honors thesis was directed by Professor Laura Otis. Professor John Johnston served on his committee along with Dr. Annaelle Devergnas, the neurologist in whose lab he was studying the propagation of seizures. He is currently working as a research assistant in a lab at Northwestern.
Congratulations to Professor Valerie Babb, who is co-Principal Investigator of a $1 million Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant awarded to the University of Georgia’s Willson Center to fund partnerships with the Penn Center, one of the nation’s most important institutions of African American culture. The project, “Culture and Community at the Penn Center National Historic Landmark District” will include a range of programs: community-based artist residencies, a series of public conversations on the importance of preserving this cultural history, and in-place studies for students from UGA, Emory, and other HBCU partner institutions.
Located on St. Helena Island within the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor, a National Heritage Area established by the U.S. Congress to recognize the unique culture of the Gullah Geechee people (descendants of formerly enslaved West and Central Africans who have traditionally resided in the coastal areas of North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Florida), Penn Center is a nonprofit organization committed to African American education, community development, and social justice.
We look forward to seeing this vital public humanities project develop and to the exciting opportunities it will provide for students over the coming years!
