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John Howard Birss, Jr. Memorial Program

Through the Professor John Howard Birss, Jr. Memorial Lecture and Professor John Howard Birss, Jr. Memorial Library Fund (established by University alumnus, Robert Blais '70), a significant or culturally impactful book is chosen annually to be honored. The program engages the campus and local community through discussions, celebrations, related collections, a library exhibit, and culminates with the annual Birss Lecture.

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Unpainted to the Last: "Moby Dick" and Twentieth Century American Art

Elizabeth Schultz
A Celebration of the 150th Anniversary of the Publication of "Uncle Tom's Cabin"

Joan D. Hedrick
"Fahrenheit 451" After Fifty Years

William F. Touponce
Commemorating the 150th Anniversary of the Original Publication of Hnery Davod Thoreau's 'Walden"

Lawrence Buell
Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass" After 150 Years: What we still don't know abut one of America's most famous books

Ed Folsom
"The Good Earth" and American Culture, Or Who's Afraid of Pearl S. Buck?

Peter Conn
All My Words are One Word: The Posthumous Fame of Jack Kerouac

Ann Charters
50 Years of "Night": Between History and Memory

James E. Young
Huckleberry Finn: Persons Attempting to Find a Moral Will Be Banished

James Leonard
Still Flying After All These Years:The Enduring Presence of "To Kill a Mockingbird"

Alice Hall Petry
Still Catching On: Jospeh Heller's "Catch 22" at Fifty

James Magel
Their Eyes Were Watching God": A Meditation on Life

Deborah G. Plant
"The Bell Jar" at 50

Karen V. Kukil
Still Tramping Out the Vintage: "The Grapes of Wrath" at 75

Robert DeMott
Reading "Native Son" in the Twenty-First Century

Jennifer Jensen Wallach
What's So Dangerous About "In Cold Blood"?

Thomas Fahy
Violence and History in "One Hundred Years of Solitude": The Politics of Magical Realism

Maria-Helena Rueda
Eldridge Cleaver, "Soul on Ice", & the Black Panthers

Kathleen Cleaver
50 Years on and So it Goes

Rick Moody, Ginger Strand, and Nanette Vonnegut
Fiction, Life, and "The Red Badge of Courage"

Christopher Benfey
Talking About Race Through Storytelling

Danny Senna, Michael White, and Cheylon Woods
Two Places - The Inside Room and The Outside Room

Karen Allen, Carlos Dews, Nick Norwood, and Jen Shapland
Writing and Political Activism: The Work of South African Writer Nadine Gordimer

Robert Boyers, Claire Messud, and James Wood
2024 Professor John Howard Birss, Jr. Memorial Lecture

Jesse Nasta
Celebrating 25 Years of the John Howard Birss, Jr. Memorial Program

Rick Moody