Headlined by Associate Professor of English Hilary Justice, the Department of English's Faculty Lecture Series will take a deeper look into Hemingway's work

ISU’s English Fall Faculty Lecture Series will take place at noon today in Rooms 128 and 133A of Stevenson Hall.

In this hour long event, Hilary Justice, associate professor of English, will present her lecture “Discomfort Food: Food, Culture and Trauma in the Works of Ernest Hemingway.” This event is free and open to the public.

“I’ll be discussing how Hemingway uses food and related concepts like agriculture and hospitality to interrogate trauma on various scales, such as individual trauma and cultural trauma in his fiction, arguing that food serves as his marker for where an individual, a culture or a nation stands on the spectrum of civilization,” Justice said. 

“To put it another way, writing about food provides him an opportunity to critique culture, just as contemporary food writers,” she added.

The speaker series is meant to allow faculty and students to share ideas, specifically when it comes to research in the English field of study. The lectures open up the floor for questions, comments and possible collaboration.

“Hybrid inquiry like this [lecture] is directly supported by the philosophy of the English Studies department, which encourages synthesis across disciplinary boundaries — in this case, literature, archival work and gastronomy,” Justice said.

Justice teaches courses in American literature, food and culture, drama and a course on bibliography and editing, which looks at book history and working with manuscripts. She finished her Ph.D. at the University of Chicago in 2001. Before attending graduate school, Justice taught high school English and theater in New England.

“The speaker series’ intent is to allow faculty in the department to show other faculty and graduate students and undergraduate students what their current research projects are, so the presentations don’t tend to be final works, but works in progress,” Mark Vegter, assistant to the chair in the Department of English, said.

“We have a committee called the Professional Growth Committee in the department, and that committee sends out a call once a year for faculty who are working on projects who are interested in presenting their work at a faculty lecture series,” he added.

There is one speaker series lecture a semester, and the program has been running for three years now.

Dr. Rebecca Saunders will be presenting in either late February or early March. As of now, she has not titled the lecture.

For more information or to arrange special accommodation, contact the Department of English at (309) 438-3667.