Public lecture on Plymouth Rock by John Seelye
Internationally renowned scholar and public speaker John Seelye will give a special presentation at 5 p.m. on Wednesday, April 21, at Virginia Tech in 100 Hancock.
The presentation will be a humorous and informative slide show, “Moby Rock: The Iconography of America’s Oldest Monument,” which explores how Plymouth Rock has been presented in American history and popular culture. Designed for the lay audience, the presentation is based on Professor Seelye’s book “Memory’s Nation: The Place of Plymouth Rock.” The event is free and open to the public.
John Seelye is the Graduate Research Professor of American Literature at the University of Florida. Winner of Guggenheim, Mellon, and National Endowment fellowships, he has published fiction, poetry, and scholarly studies of Melville, Twain, and the river in American literature and life. He also is the general editor of Penguin Classics of American literature and is at work on a book about the influence of “Jane Eyre” on women writers in America.
For more information, contact the English Department at Virginia Tech, (540) 231-6501.
The College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences embraces the arts, humanities, social and human sciences, and education. The college nurtures intellect and spirit, enlightens decision-making, inspires positive change, and improves the quality of life for people of all ages. It is home to the departments of apparel, housing and resource management, communication, educational leadership and policy studies, English, foreign languages and literatures, history; human development, interdisciplinary studies, music, philosophy, political science, ROTC, science and technology in society, sociology, teaching and learning, and theatre arts.
Founded in 1872 as a land-grant college, Virginia Tech has grown to become the largest university in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Today, Virginia Tech’s eight colleges are dedicated to putting knowledge to work through teaching, research, and outreach activities and to fulfilling its vision to be among the top 30 research universities in the nation. At its 2,600-acre main campus located in Blacksburg and other campus centers in Northern Virginia, Southwest Virginia, Hampton Roads, Richmond, and Roanoke, Virginia Tech enrolls more than 28,000 full- and part-time undergraduate and graduate students from all 50 states and more than 100 countries in 170 academic degree programs.
