Berube is Inaugural Speaker in SU's Dotterer Public Lectures on Literature Series
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ALISBURY, MD---Dr. Michael Bérubé, director of Pennsylvania State University’s Institute for the Arts is the inaugural speaker in Salisbury University’s Dotterer Public Lectures on Literature series.
His presentation, “Intellectual Disability and Literary Self Awareness,” is 7 p.m. Thursday, October 20, in the Worcester Room of the Commons.
Bérubé is also the Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Literature at Penn State. He has written 10 books, including the New York Times Notable Book of the Year, Life as We Know It: A Father, a Family and an Exceptional Child, also selected as one of the best books of 1996 by National Public Radio.
The autobiographical book chronicled Bérubé’s experiences with his young son, Jamie, who was born with Down syndrome. A sequel, Life as Jamie Knows It: An Exceptional Child Grows Up, is scheduled for release this October.
In The Secret Life of Stories: From Don Quixote to Harry Potter, How Understanding Intellectual Disability Transforms the Way We Read, also published this year, Bérubé interweaves his family’s own history with examples from books including William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series to demonstrate possibilities in the ways disability is portrayed and referenced in fiction.
The Dotterer Public Lectures on Literature series was endowed by Dr. Ron Dotterer, former dean of the Charles R. and Martha N. Fulton School of Liberal Arts, who retired last summer as a professor of English following nearly 23 years at SU.
Sponsored by the English Department, admission is free and the public is invited. For more information call 410-543-6030 or visit the SU website at www.salibury.edu.