FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

MANHATTAN COLLEGE'S PHI BETA KAPPA VISITING SCHOLARS PROGRAM HOSTS A LECTURE THAT EXAMINES LANGUAGE AND ART

RIVERDALE, N.Y. – Leonard Barkan, Ph.D., the Arthur W. Marks ’19 Professor of Comparative Literature and director of the Society of Fellows at Princeton University, will speak at Manhattan College on Thursday, April 15 at 4:30 p.m. as part of the Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholars Program.  Dr. Barkan’s lecture will be held on the College’s campus in the Carmen Rodriguez Room (room 311) in Miguel Hall.  This event is free and open to the public.

Some poets have engaged in the practice known as ekphrasis or the verbal description of a visual art object.  Conversely, artists often place written words on their pictures or paintings.  Dr. Barkan will deliver a lecture that aims to connect these two practices in an attempt to understand the relationship between language and the visual, especially in the culture of the Renaissance.

Dr. Barkan is the author of Nature’s Work of Art, The Gods Made Flesh and Unearthing the Past.  His interests range from antiquity to the Renaissance, from poetry to painting and from theater to food.  Dr. Barkan, who has taught art history and English at New York University and Northwestern, is a fellow of the New York Institute for the Humanities and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.  His current projects include a study of the relations between aesthetics and pleasure and a book entitled Satyr Square, which is an artistic, literary, personal and culinary memoir of life in Rome. 

The Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholars Program aims to contribute to the intellectual life of the campus by facilitating and exchanging ideas among visiting scholars, students and faculty members.  The College’s English department and the Upsilon of New York chapter of Phi Beta Kappa are sponsoring this event.

For further information about this program, please contact Dr. Michael Judge at (718) 405-3391 or e-mail michael.judge@manhattan.edu.  If you are a member of the press and would like to cover this event, please contact Melanie A. Farmer at (718) 862-7232.   Manhattan College is located at West 242nd Street near Broadway in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, one mile from the Westchester County line and accessible by MTA subway lines 1 and 9.

Manhattan College was founded in 1853 upon the Lasallian tradition of excellence in teaching, inspired by St. John Baptist de La Salle.  Manhattan College is an independent, Catholic, coeducational institution of higher learning that offers more than 40 major programs of study in the areas of arts, business, education, engineering and science. 

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