A University of Pennsylvania scholar will discuss how best-selling author Ernest Gaines uses aspects of folklore and oral storytelling in his fiction.
Dr. Thadious M. Davis, a professor of English, will speak during the fourth annual Ernest J. Gaines Lecture Series. The session will be held at 11 a.m. on Thursday, Oct. 27, at the Ernest J. Gaines Center on the third floor of Edith Garland Dupré Library.
Gaines is writer-in-residence emeritus at UL Lafayette.
“In his fiction, people often give renditions of their lives and histories. The vehicle that moves the story forward in all of Gaines’ work is conversation,” said Cheylon Woods, director of the Gaines Center.
Davis teaches courses about African-American literature and Southern literature. She has published widely on Gaines and lectured internationally.
This summer, Davis was among a panel of lecturers who participated in a nationally funded summer institute, titled “Ernest J. Gaines and the Southern Experience,”
that was hosted by the Gaines Center.
The Gaines Center is an international center for scholarship on the writer and his fiction.
Gaines was a faculty member at the University for 21 years before he retired in 2004. His literary career, which includes nine works of fiction, began in 1964, with the publication of “Catherine Carmier.”
His “The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman,” is a first-person narrative of a fictional 110-year-old woman born into slavery. Published in 1971, it earned the writer a widespread audience, critical acclaim and was adapted into a TV movie that won nine Emmy Awards.
“A Lesson Before Dying,” about an illiterate man condemned to death that was published in 1993, won a National Book Critics Circle Award. The novel was selected for Oprah Winfrey’s popular book club. Gaines received a National Medal of Arts in 2013 at the White House.
The Gaines lecture is free and open to the public. Parking will be available at the Girard Park Circle parking garage. Vehicles enter from Girard Park Circle, via a driveway between Fletcher and Oliver halls.
For more information about the lecture, contact the Gaines Center at gainescenter@louisiana.edu or (337) 482-1848. To learn more about the center, visit http://ernestgaines.louisiana.edu/.