SU’s Teres to discuss readers’ reactions in lecture ‘The Grapes of Wrath: Then and Now’

SU’s Teres to discuss readers’ reactionsin lecture ‘The Grapes of Wrath: Then and Now’February 23, 2005Edward Byrnesedbyrnes@syr.edu

Harvey Teres, professor of English in The College of Arts and Sciences, will present a lecture, “Reading The Grapes of Wrath: Then and Now,” Thursday, Feb. 24 at 4 p.m. in the 1916 Room of SU’s E.S. Bird Library. The event is free and open to the public, and parking is available at any University pay lot.

Teres, having interviewed members of the Syracuse community who are reading John Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath” as participants in the recent Onondaga County Public Library and Syracuse Stage community initiative “If All of Central New York Read The Grapes of Wrath,” will compare their experiences with those of readers in the past. He will entertain questions about how the novel is being used to promote the values of citizenship and what role literature should play in such an endeavor.

After receiving his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1986, Teres taught at Princeton University until 1993, when he joined the SU faculty. He has written a book, “Renewing the Left: Politics, Imagination, and the New York Intellectuals” (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996); essays in “Modern Philology;” reviews in “Modernism/Modernity;” and many other articles. In 1999, he was the recipient of a Fulbright Senior Scholar grant.

The event is sponsored by SU Library Associates and is complemented by the SU Special Collections Research Center exhibition, “Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath: Bitter Fruit of the Depression,” which can be viewed in the exhibits gallery on the sixth floor of E.S. Bird Library, Monday through Friday, 9 a.m.-5 p.m., through May 27, 2005. An online version of the exhibition can be viewed at http://libwww.syr.edu/digital/exhibits/g/GrapesOfWrath/. The exhibition is supported by the Peter Graham Fund for Radicalism in Literature and Art.