Friday, October 21, 2011

Nearly six decades ago, Ralph Ellison set out to write the great American novel. He accomplished that with Invisible Man, a classic from the moment it first appeared in 1952, which chronicles the travels of its narrator, a young, nameless black man, as he moves through the hellish levels of American intolerance and cultural blindness.

Biographer and literary critic Arnold Rampersad will speak about Ellison at 4 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 2 in Lumina Theater at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. In his talk, part of this year's Buckner Lecture Series, Rampersad will speak about Ellison, the boundaries he pushed with the publication of Invisible Man in the 1950s and how the book's message and conflict are still relevant today.

The event is free and open to the public but does require tickets, which will be available at the door on a first-come, first-served basis.

Rampersad is the author of Ralph Ellison: A Biography (Knopf, 2007), and he has also written biographies of Langston Hughes and Jackie Robinson. He is one of the nation's leading scholars of African-American literature. In 2010, Rampersad received the National Humanities Medal, the highest government honor given in recognition of extraordinary achievements in history, literature, education and cultural policy.

In its review, Amazon.com said of Rampersad's biography, "Given complete access to Ellison's papers, Rampersad tells the story of Ellison's long apprenticeship as a musician and writer and his long life, full of honors and frustrations, after the great success of Invisible Man, capturing the complexities, to use of one of Ellison's favorite words, of his elusive subject, at once passionate and patrician, fiercely critical of his country's racial divisions and stubbornly hopeful about its democratic possibilities."

Rampersad's lecture will provide background and context for another UNCW event, as the Office of Cultural Arts sponsors a stage adaptation of Invisible Man. Rampersad is The Sara Hart Kimbell Professor of Humanities, Emeritus, and a member of the English department at Stanford University. He has taught at Rutgers, Columbia and Princeton.

The Buckner Lecture Series was established in UNCW's Department of English by donor Charles F. Green III to provide funding to bring distinguished guest presenters to the university and to honor his friend, Katherine K. Buckner. This event is co-sponsored by the Upperman African American Cultural Center and Africana Studies as a part the Office of Cultural Arts' stage presentation of Invisible Man.

For further information, please visit www.uncw.edu/english/buckner.html or contact the chair of the Buckner Lecture Committee, Mark Boren, at borenm@uncw.edu.

Media contact:
Dana Fischetti, media relations manager, 910.508.3127 or fischettid@uncw.edu