Thursday, November 2, 2006

Writer: Suzi Wong, 706/542-7103, swong@uga.edu
Contact: Jed Rasula, 706/542-2184, rasulaj@uga.edu; Ed Pavlic, 706/542-3434, pavlic@uga.edu

UGA’s Lanier Series to host music critic and scholar of soul and jazz Craig Werner

Athens, Ga. – The University of Georgia’s Lanier Speaker Series in the English department and the Creative Writing Program will host Craig Werner (below), Professor of Afro-American Studies at the University of Wisconsin (Madison) on Nov. 16-17.  His talk, “Love and Happiness: Eros According to Octavio Paz, John Donne and the Reverend Al Green” takes place on Nov. 17 at 3:30 p.m. in room 265 Park Hall. 

Werner’s widely-acclaimed books include Playing the Changes: From Afro-Modernism to the Jazz Impulse (University of Illinois Press, 1994), A Change is Gonna Come: Music, Race and the Soul of America ((revised and expanded, University of Michigan Press, 2006), and most recently, Higher Ground: Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Curtis Mayfield, and the Rise and Fall of American Soul (Crown, 2004).

According to Ed Pavlic, director of the Creative Writing Program, “Craig Werner is able to bridge cultural and historical gaps, spin connections, and open up arrays of complexity to a wide audience. Moving between works by Shakespeare, Joyce, Donne, Paz, Baldwin, Curtis Mayfield, and Al Green, Werner’s thought operates on a playing field leveled by a life of equally prodigious reading, writing, and teaching.”

Jed Rasula, Helen S. Lanier Distinguished Professor of English, adds, “Craig Werner combines the industriousness of the scholar with the unabashed enthusiasm of the fan.  His writing about American popular music is always informative, thought provoking, and inspirational.” 

UGA’s Lanier Series, launched in 2001 by Rasula, annually brings scholars and writers in various fields to campus. The mission of the series is to enrich the intellectual life of the campus, to extend the English department's outreach to the academic community, to enhance interdisciplinary discourse, and to engage alumni and Athens residents. Previous speakers in the Lanier series include Louis Menand (winner of the National Book Award), Marjorie Perloff (President of the Modern Language Association), internationally renowned scholar Fredric Jameson, Irish poet Paul Muldoon, Ed Sanders (founder of the rock band The Fugs), jazz scholar and record producer Robert O'Meally, Griffin Poetry Prize winners Christian Bok and Alice Notley, and influential "language poet" Lyn Hejinian.

With poet J.Allyn Rosser, Werner will also give a reading of his recent fiction at the Georgia Poetry Circuit Reading sponsored in Athens by The Georgia Review on Nov. 16, at 7 p.m. at Tasty World.  Both events are free and open to the public.

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