CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — University of Illinois English professor Nina Baym will discuss the link between women and their interest in science — from a historical perspective — when she presents the Center for Advanced Study’s 10th annual professors’ lecture Nov. 28 at the UI.
Baym, a professor in the center, will speak at 7:30 p.m. in the Colwell Playhouse at Krannert Center for the Performing Arts, 500 S. Goodwin Ave., Urbana. Her talk, “American Women of Letters and the Nineteenth Century Sciences,” will focus on how influential American women of letters worked to interest women in science at a time when science was becoming an important aspect of everyday life.
The author of six books and dozens of scholarly articles, Baym is a historian and critic of American literature who specializes in 19th century writers, female writers, fiction, nonfiction and the relationship of literary culture to other aspects of 19th century American society. She also is general editor of the “Norton Anthology of American Literature,” the most widely used college anthology in the field.
From 1976-87, she served as the director of the UI’s School of Humanities, and in 1997, she was appointed to a Swanlund Chair, the highest endowed title the campus bestows on professors.
CAS is a unit of the UI Graduate College and is charged with encouraging creative achievement and scholarship. Appointment to a professorship in the center is the highest recognition that the campus can bestow upon a faculty member.
