"Celebrating Our Books"

Washington University in Saint Louis - Saint Louis, MO, U.S.A.
Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Famed novelist Joyce Carol Oates to speak for "Celebrating Our Books" colloquium Dec. 3 Sixth annual event sponsored by Center for the Humanities and Washington University Libraries

Joyce Carol Oates, one of America's most important and distinguished authors, three times nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature, will deliver the keynote address, titled "The Writer's (Secret) Life: Woundedness, Rejection, and Inspiration," for "Celebrating Our Books, Recognizing Our Authors," Washington University's sixth annual faculty book colloquium.

"Celebrating Our Books" honors the work of scholars from across the arts and sciences disciplines.

Featured faculty presenters, who will present their works, are Ahmet T. Karamustafa, professor of history and religious studies in Arts & Sciences, who will speak on his book, Sufism: The Formative Period (2007); and Marina MacKay, assistant professor of English in Arts & Sciences, who will speak on her book, Modernism and World War II (2007).

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Karamustafa's Sufism: The Formative Period is a comprehensive historical overview of the formative period of Sufism, the major mystical tradition in Islam, from the ninth to the twelfth century.

Based on a fresh reading of the primary sources and the integration of the findings of recent scholarship on the subject, Karamustafa presents a unified narrative of Sufism's historical development within an innovative analytical framework.

The event — sponsored by the Center for the Humanities in Arts & Sciences and University Libraries — is free and open to the public and begins at 5 p.m. Monday, Dec. 3, in Holmes Lounge. For more information, call (314) 935-5576 or email cenhum@artsci.wustl.edu.