One of the world’s foremost experts on Shakespeare is coming to Northern Arizona University to discuss the implications of the Adam and Eve story.
Stephen Greenblatt, John Cogan University Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University, is presenting “Getting Real: The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve” at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, March 24, at Cline Library Assembly Hall. The Cline Lecture in the Humanities event is free and open to the public.
As one of the founders of “new historicism,” Greenblatt contributes prominent scholarship emphasizing a literary work’s original historic context and its connections to the present. He presents how Renaissance artists gave Adam and Eve physical bodies, psychological depth, a complex marriage and other attributes of real people, which had unexpected consequences for how people lived their lives for centuries.
Greenblatt is a renowned literary critic and scholar with expertise in Renaissance and Shakespeare studies. He has published 12 books, including the 2012 Pulitzer Prize-winning “The Swerve: How the World Became Modern,” and “Will in the World,” the best-selling biography of William Shakespeare. He is the recipient of the Mellon Foundation Distinguished Humanist Award, two Guggenheim Fellowships, Harvard University’s Cabot Fellowship and more.
NAU’s Department of Comparative Cultural Studies, College of Arts and Letters, Department of English, Martin-Springer Institute, Department of History, Honors Program, University College, Office of the Provost and the School of Art are sponsoring the event.