Distinguished professor and poet to present Birmingham-Southern's annual Phi Beta Kappa lecture

For Immediate Release
Feb. 11, 2020

BIRMINGHAM, Ala.—Birmingham-Southern College will host Linda Gregerson, the Caroline Walker Bynum Distinguished University Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Michigan, for two days in February as part of the 2019-20 Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar Program.

Her talk, “We Talk to One Another? Poetry in an Era of Social Division,” will be held at 11 a.m. (Common Hour) Thursday, Feb. 27 in the Norton Campus Center Theatre. She will explore how civil conversation – the thoughtful, exploratory engagement of heart and mind, collective attention to issues of collective urgency – has diminished in recent years in the United States.

“Put simply, we don’t seem to be very good at talking to one another anymore or at listening to those whose experience, hopes, and fears are different than our own. Where can we turn? Many in recent years, of all races and walks of life, have turned to lyric poetry, with a resultant burgeoning of diverse voices, perspectives, and forms.”

Lyric poetry has long been identified as the genre of personal expression, and that is surely one of its strengths, but as poetry written to be read by others, it has always occupied a complicated terrain of private/public. Its subjects are not always easily consoling, but its premise, the written-to-be-read part, is by nature a hopeful one.

During two days on campus, Gregerson will engage with students and faculty in the college’s Harrison Honors Program and spending time in class with students in BSC’s humanities and social sciences programs.

She is co-editor of “Empires of God: Religious Encounters in the Early Modern Atlantic” and author of “The Reformation of the Subject: Spenser, Milton, and the English Protestant Epic,” as well as six books of poetry and a volume of essays on the contemporary American lyric. Her essays on Milton, Spenser, Shakespeare, Wyatt, and Jonson appear in numerous journals and anthologies. She has received awards and fellowships from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Poetry Society of America, the Modern Poetry Association, the Institute for Advanced Study, the National Humanities Center, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim, Mellon, and Rockefeller Foundations. She is a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Since 1956, the Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar Program has offered undergraduates the opportunity to spend time with some of America’s most distinguished scholars. The program contributes to intellectual life on campus by making possible an exchange of ideas between the visiting scholars and the resident faculty and students.

The event is open to the public and admission is free. For more information, call (205) 226-7832.

Birmingham-Southern College is a four-year, private liberal arts institution affiliated with the United Methodist Church and accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. The institution is the result of a 1918 merger of Southern University, founded in Greensboro, Alabama, in 1856, with Birmingham College, founded in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1898. Birmingham-Southern has students from 34 states and 13 countries and a student/faculty ratio of 12:1.