Wednesday, April 26, 2000

By Audrey Whaley, PR Intern

WILMINGTON, NC- John Shelton Reed, professor and author, will speak before one of the largest classes of UNC Wilmington graduates at 10 a.m., Saturday, May 13, in Trask Coliseum on the university campus. Reed will address approximately 1,190 bachelor's degree candidates and 170 master's candidates at this May's commencement.

Reed completed his undergraduate work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and received his Ph.D. from Columbia University. Since 1969, he has worked in the Department of Sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he is now William Rand Kenan, Jr. Professor of Sociology. Reed is also director of the Institute for Research in Social Science.

Professor Reed has received numerous fellowships and awards and has lectured at over 100 colleges and universities in the U.S. and abroad, including a number in India as Fulbright Distinguished Lecturer in 1988. He has held visiting positions at several institutions, including the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Cambridge University, where he spent 1996-97 as the Pitt Professor of American History and Institutions.

Reed is not only a distinguished professor, but he is also an eminent author. He has written or edited over a dozen books, the most recent being a book with his wife, Dale Volberg Reed, named 1001 Things Everyone Should Know About the South. Other Reed books include The Enduring Effects of Education, Surveying the South: Studies in Regional Sociology, and Glorious Battle: The Cultural Politics of Victorian Anglo-Catholicism. His articles have appeared in professional and popular periodicals ranging from Science to Southern Living. Reed is a founding co-editor of the quarterly Southern Cultures.

President Reagan appointed Reed to the council of the National Endowment for the Humanities. He has been president of the Southern Sociological Society. Reed is the only sociologist to be included in Roy Blount's Book of Southern Humor.

Master's degree candidates should report to Hanover Gym at 9 a.m., and bachelor's degree candidates should report to Hanover Gym at 9:15 a.m. to robe and prepare for the processional. Following the main ceremony, academic departments will hold individual commencement ceremonies and host receptions for their graduates and guests. The respective buildings will appear in the commencement program.

For more information, contact Mary Crookes at 910/962-7231 or go to the commencement web site at http://www.uncwil.edu/uniadv/commencement/index.html.