Thursday, September 29, 2005

Wilmington, N.C. - Wilmington native Mary Ann Caws, a Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature, English and French at the Graduate School of the City University of New York, will speak at 4 p.m. on Oct. 17 in UNCW’s King Hall Auditorium. Her talk, “Eccentric Women Writing and Painting,” will be followed by a book signing and reception. The event is sponsored by the Buckner Lecture Series and the UNCW department of English and is free and open to the public.

Professor Caws is a prolific author and editor of numerous books and articles, including To the Boathouse: A Memoir, which examines her life from her roots in Wilmington to her years at Bryn Mawr, Yale and beyond. Caws, who has held Guggenheim, Rockefeller, N.E.H. and Getty Foundation fellowships, is also author of many works of scholarship, including Picasso’s Weeping Woman: The Life and Work of Dora Maar, Marcel Proust, and Virginia Woolf.

Caws was co-director of the Henri Peyre French Institute from 1980-2002. She is an officer of the Palmes Academiques, awarded by the French Minister of Education, and is a Trustee of the French Institute of Washington.

The Buckner Lecture Series was established by Charles F. Green III to provide funding to bring distinguished guest presenters to UNCW and in honor of his friend, Katherine K. Buckner.

For further information, contact Janet Ellerby, chair of the UNCW Buckner Committee, at 910-962-3764.