Featured Speakers

Margaret Atwood is a giant of modern literature who has anticipated, explored, satirized—and even changed—the popular preoccupations of our time. The Booker Prize-winning author of The Handmaid’s Tale and The Blind Assassin, Atwood is the rare writer whose work is adored by the public, acclaimed by the critics, and studied on university campuses around the world. Though her subject matter varies, the precision crafting of her language—she is also a renowned poet—gives her body of work a sensibility entirely its own.

Based in Toronto, Atwood has written over forty classic books which have been translated into over thirty languages. Her novels include Alias Grace, Life Before Man, Oryx and Crake and 2009’s The Year of the Flood. Her major awards include The Giller and The Governor General’s Award (Canada), The Booker Prize (UK), The Dashiell Hammett Award (United States), and the Le Chevalier dans l’Ordre de Arts et Les Lettres (France).

Dr. Ron Cooper is Professor of Humanities at the College of Central Florida. He believes that the imaginative worlds created in fiction can be excellent vehicles for exploration of philosophical issues. In particular, fictional characters can exemplify philosophical concepts while struggling to transform thought into action and to establish their own sense of identity. To do this well, one element is essential: humor. Cooper will discuss a number of philosophical novels and will read from his own Hume’s Fork, which was called by philosopher-novelist Rebecca Goldstein a “mix of zaniness and erudition, satire and insight . . . as delicious as it is original,” and his new novel Purple Jesus. A book signing will follow his presentation.

Dr. Nicolas Shumway is the author of The Invention of Argentina. He is an expert in Latin-American history and culture, ideologies of Hispanism, Latin-American writers, and studies in Spanish-American literature. His highly acclaimed history of Argentina considers how the “guiding fictions” of Argentina’s national heroes, politicians, theoreticians, and poets are ultimately responsible for the identity of Argentina.

Dr. Fred Gardaphe is Distinguished Professor of English and Italian American Studies at Queens College/CUNY and the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute. From 1998-2008 he directed the American and Italian/American Studies Programs at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He is Associate Editor of Fra Noi, an Italian American monthly newspaper, editor of the Series in Italian American Studies at State University of New York Press, and co-founding-co-editor of Voices in Italian Americana, a literary journal and cultural review. He is past president of the Society for the Study of Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States (MELUS) (2003-2006) and the American Italian Historical Association (1996-2000), and is currently the president of the Working Class Studies Association. His edited books include New Chicago Stories, Italian American Ways, and From the Margin: Writings in Italian Americana. His most recent books are From Wiseguys to Wise Men: Masculinities and the Italian American Gangster and The Art of Reading Italian Americana.

For the full history of the featured speakers of the Belmont University Humanities Symposium, click here.

Download the full program here.