Centre professors explore barbeque, Don Quixote in upcoming convocations

RELEASED: Jan. 18, 2007

DANVILLE, KY—From southern culture to Spanish literature, a wide range of events is coming to Centre's campus the week of Jan. 21.

Professor and author Dr. John Shelton Reed Jr. will give a free public lecture titled "Barbecue: A Southern Institution" on Sunday, Jan. 21 at 7:30 p.m. in Weisiger Theatre on campus.

Reed, a Centre College Humana Visiting Professor, is the Kenan Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. He is currently co-authoring a book on barbecue with his wife, Dale Volberg Reed. Reed will discuss the origins and history of the South's national dish, with attention to its regional variations and peculiar postmodern developments.

Reed is currently teaching a CentreTerm course titled "Defining the South." The course explores questions of regional identity and consciousness, regional stereotypes, representations of Southerners in the mass media, localism, attitudes toward violence, and religious behavior and belief.

A native of Kingsport, Tenn., Reed completed his undergraduate work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and received a Ph.D. from Columbia University before going to Chapel Hill in 1969. He has written or edited more than a dozen books, including 1001 Things Everyone Should Know About the South. Reed is a contributing writer to many publications, and has lectured at more than 200 colleges and universities in the United States.

The Centre College Humana Visiting Professor Program, funded by an endowment from the Humana Foundation, allows Centre to invite leading scholars to campus each year to directly share in the lives of students and faculty. The College rotates the program among various academic areas, bringing outstanding persons from fields ranging from literature to science.

In another upcoming convocation, Patricia Finch, Spanish professor at Centre, and her husband, Jay Allen, professor emeritus at the University of Kentucky, will present material from their 2004 book, Don Quijote en el arte y pensamiento de Occidente [Don Quixote in Western Art and Thought] on Monday, Jan. 22 at 7:30 p.m. in Weisiger Theatre on campus. The lecture is presented in conjunction with the production of Man of La Mancha coming to the Norton Center for the Arts on Tuesday, Jan. 23.

Cervantes' Don Quixote, the endearing tale of a mad, errant knight and his sidekick Sancho Panza is second only to the Bible as the world's most translated book. 

Finch and Allen have also put together an exhibit of Cervantine materials, including facsimile editions of the two parts of Don Quijote and Cervantes' La Galatea, reproductions of Cervantine archival documents, a model of the open-air playhouse where Cervantes' early plays were staged in Madrid, four different editions produced especially for the 2005 centenary, several recent English translations and a number of graphic representations and posters. The exhibit is on display in the lobby of the Norton Center for the Arts in January.

Finch has published an edition of Fernando de Rojas’s La Celestina (2003) and several articles on Cervantes and on La Celestina. She is currently at work on an English translation of La Celestina.

- end -

Founded in 1819, Centre College is ranked among the U.S. News top 50 national liberal arts colleges. Centre alumni, known for their nation-leading loyalty in annual financial support, include two U.S. vice presidents and two Supreme Court justices. For more, visit http://www.centre.edu/web/elevatorspeech/

For news archives go to http://www.centre.edu/web/news/newsarchive.html.