Literary, legal scholar Ferguson to speak Oct. 19

Literary, legal scholar Ferguson to speak Oct. 19

FROM RICE NEWS STAFF REPORTS

Literary and legal scholar Robert Ferguson will compare two classic American novels in an Oct. 19 lecture, “Growing Up with Jo and Huck: The Deeper Read,” to be held at 4:30 p.m. in Herring Hall, Room 100.

A professor of law, literature and criticism at Columbia Law School, Ferguson will depart from his usual examination of characters in novels and the study of law to compare Louisa May Alcott’s “Little Women” and Mark Twain’s “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.”

Among other things, Ferguson will argue that Alcott’s novel, despite its far greater sentimentality, is the more “adult book.” He will also discuss the nature of growing up in 19th-century American culture.

Ferguson is author of “Law and Letters in American Culture,” “The American Enlightenment, 1750-1820” and “Reading the Early Republic,” as well as numerous articles on American literature, legal history and the relationship of law and legal institutions to American writing. He is currently is working on a new project about generational conflict in American culture.

In the classroom, Ferguson explores uses of literature in understanding the theory and practice of law. He uses Theodore Dreiser’s “An American Tragedy” and E.L. Doctrow’s “Book of Daniel” in his course called “The Trial in American Life.” In another course, he juxtaposes Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” with work by Derrick Bell on critical race history.

His Columbia University faculty profile reads, “One thing you learn as a lawyer: Unless it’s a story the jury has heard before and believes, you won’t win the case. Storytelling is central. An understanding of point of view and narrative can make you a more conscious wordsmith as a lawyer.”

Ferguson earned law and doctoral degrees in the history of American civilization at Harvard. He has taught in the English departments at Harvard, the University of Chicago, Stanford and Princeton and taught law at the University of Chicago and Yale. At Columbia, he teaches undergraduate English courses in addition to his law school courses.

For more information, visit <http://humanities.rice.edu> or contact Lisa Birenbaum in the Office of the Dean of Humanities, 713-348-4810 or <lbirenba@rice.edu>.