Texas A&M Phi Beta Kappa Chapter Presents Laura Brown, Visiting Scholar

Laura Brown, the John Wendell Anderson Professor of English at Cornell University, will give a presentation titled “’Real’ Animals and the Eighteenth-Century Literary Imagination” on Thursday, April 4 at 6 p.m. in 105 ARCC (Architecture Building C) on the campus of Texas A&M University. The lecture is open to the public.

In Brown’s work as a teacher and scholar, she studies women writers, slavery and imperialism, species and racial difference, the portrayal of animals, and the imaginative force of “things.” She teaches courses on these topics as well as on writing in Cornell’s First Year Writing Seminar Program.

Her most recent books, “Homeless Dogs and Melancholy Apes: Humans and Other Animals in the Modern Literary Imagination” and “Fables of Modernity: Literature and Culture in the English Eighteenth Century,” explore the rise of the modern imaginative engagement with animals and the ways in which cultural history shapes literary form, from the creation of the stock market and the development of urban sanitation, to the public appearances of American Indian and African “princes” who visited London.

About the Phi Beta Kappa Society

Since 1956, the Phi Beta Kappa Society’s Visiting Scholar Program has been offering undergraduates the opportunity to spend time with some of America’s most distinguished scholars. The purpose of the program is to contribute to the intellectual life of the institution by making possible an exchange of ideas between the Visiting Scholars and the resident faculty and students.

The 15 men and women participating during the academic year of 2018-2019 will visit over 90 colleges and universities with chapters of Phi Beta Kappa, spending two days on each campus and taking full part in the academic life of the institution.

They will meet informally with students and faculty members, participate in classroom discussions and seminars, and give a lecture open to the university/college community and the general public.

Founded in 1776, the Phi Beta Kappa Society is the nation’s most prestigious academic honor society. It has chapters at 286 colleges and universities and more than half a million members throughout the country. Its mission is to champion education in the liberal arts and sciences, foster freedom of thought, and recognize academic excellence.