Released: June 11, 1999

Centre designates Mark Lucas for professorship

DANVILLE, KY- Mark Lucas, a veteran teacher and expert on Southern literature, has been honored by Centre College with his designation to the Alfred P. and Katherine B. Jobson Professorship in English. The endowed faculty position carries a special stipend for advanced research and scholarship.

A cum laude graduate of Centre in 1975, Lucas began teaching at the college in 1981. Known as a rigorous teacher marked by his devotion to Southern literature, he has received Centre's Hughes and Kirk awards for excellence in teaching. He also has received an NEH Fellowship, and he was chosen for the Hartsell Award for teaching at the University of North Carolina.

This year Lucas won an Al Smith Fellowship from the Kentucky Arts Council for his current work on a novel. A portion of his book manuscript previously won the Kentucky Chapbook Competition and was published by Larkspur Press under the title The Aristeia of Audubon Vine.

Lucas is the author of The Southern Vision of Andrew Lytle (Louisiana State University Press, 1987) and editor of Home Voices: A Sampler of Southern Writing (University Press of Kentucky, 1991). He contributed to Fifty Southern Writers after 1900 (Greenwood Press, 1987) and the Companion to Southern Literature (Louisiana State University Press, 1998).

Lucas holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He and his family lived in London for a year while he served as the teacher and director of Centre's residential study abroad program in England.

As part of his teaching at Centre, Lucas has held Cajun dinners in his backyard, sponsored Southern Gothic parody contests, demonstrated Delta blues guitar styles and led trips to William Faulkner's home in Mississippi to help students understand the context of literature that arose in the American South. He has been instrumental in bringing such contemporary Southern authors as Peter Taylor, Larry Brown and Lee Smith to Centre's campus.

The Jobson Professorship was created by a substantial bequest to Centre from the estate of a New York business executive and his wife. Carol Bastian, who has held the professorship since its inception in 1996, retired this year from Centre.

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Coordinator of Public Information: Patsi Barnes Trollinger
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