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10/4/12
Speaker At SLU To Discuss Debate Between Country & City
CANTON - Sarah Skwire, a fellow at Liberty Fund, Inc., will give a talk at St. Lawrence University titled "Leaving the Land of Cockaigne," considering some of the long history of the literary debate between the country and the city. The lecture, open to the public free of charge, is on Thursday, October 25, at 7:30 p.m. in the auditorium of Hepburn Hall.
As the medieval dream of the work-free land of Cockaigne once gave way to the vision of urban success, now many are longing again for the promises of the pastoral. Literature and art provide windows into these desires and dreams, but the discussion is not merely aesthetic and historical. It is increasingly relevant to current debates over topics like locavorism, the status of the American city and globalization.
Skwire is the author of the college writing textbook Writing with a Thesis, now in its 11th edition. She has won prizes for her poetry which has appeared, among other places, in The New Criterion, The Oxford Magazine and The Vocabula Review. Skwire is also the author of a range of academic articles on subjects from Shakespeare to "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," and her writing has appeared in journals as varied as Literature and Medicine and The Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization. She is a graduate of Wesleyan University, with a master's degree and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.
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