Literary Darwinism Topic of ALLELE Lecture at UA

TUSCALOOSA, Ala.  — Dr. Joseph Carroll, professor of English at the University of Missouri-St. Louis and a leading scholar on the connection between social science and literary study, will visit The University of Alabama to give the lecture “The Historical Position of Literary Darwinism” April 18 at 7:30 p.m. in the Biology Building auditorium.

This is the final lecture in the 2012-2013 Alabama’s Lecture on Life’s Evolution Series, or ALLELE, an interdisciplinary lecture series organized by UA’s Evolution Working Group. The lecture is free and open to the public.

In his lecture, Carroll will discuss Literary Darwinism, which is a school of thought that integrates literary study with evolutionary social science. According to Carroll, a series of scientific developments in the past two centuries, including Darwin’s theory of natural selection, have provided the foundation for literary Darwinism.

Furthermore, three main developments in the last decade – the recognition that humans have evolved adaptations for cooperative social interaction, the idea of domain-specific cognitive modules within the idea of a flexible general intelligence, and the recognition of the significance of gene-culture co-evolution in human nature – provide a more adequate model of human nature.

Carroll has published monographs on Matthew Arnold and Wallace Stevens, as well as several books: “Evolution and Literary Theory,” “Literary Darwinism,” and “Reading Human Nature.” He has also edited and co-edited an edition of Darwin’s “Origin of Species,” “Evolution, Literature, and Film: A Reader;” and the first two volumes of “The Evolutionary Review.”

He received his Bachelor of Arts in English, Master of Arts in comparative literature and doctorate in comparative literature from University of California at Berkeley. He has taught previously at the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Denver.

While on campus, Carroll will also give a lecture to students in the Blount Undergraduate Initiative and the department of English on Thursday, April 18 at 2 p.m. in room 301 of Morgan Hall titled, “Graphing Jane Austen: Agonistic Structure in British Novels of the Nineteenth Century.” He will discuss his work with other researchers that used empirical methods to produce information about literature, such as human nature in Victorian novels.

The 2012-2013 ALLELE series is supported by UA’s College of Arts and Sciences, the Honors College, Blount Undergraduate Initiative, New College, educational studies in psychology, research methodology and counseling, and the departments of anthropology, biological sciences, chemistry, communicative disorders, English, gender and race studies, geological sciences, history, philosophy, psychology and telecommunications and film.

The ALLELE lecture series is part of UA’s College of Arts and Sciences, the University’s largest division and the largest liberal arts college in the state. Students from the College have won numerous national awards including Rhodes Scholarships, Goldwater Scholarships and memberships on the USA Today Academic All American Team.