"Imagining Tarzan: Constructions of Race and Gender in a Twentieth-Century Icon"
Hendrix College event considers Tarzan, an American icon
How can a guy climb trees, say, “Me Tarzan, you Jane,” and make a million? –Johnny Weissmuller
The English department at Hendrix College will host a slide lecture and panel discussion on portrayals of Tarzan in literature and popular culture on March 4. Dr. Alex Vernon, professor and Tarzan scholar, will headline the lecture.
The event, entitled “Imagining Tarzan: Constructions of Race and Gender in a Twentieth-Century Icon,” will take place on Thursday, March 4, 2010 at 7:30 p.m. in Mills Building, Lecture Hall A, on the Hendrix College campus. Refreshments will be served. The event is free and open to the public.
Vernon will examine the evolution of the Tarzan story in books, comic books and movies throughout the twentieth century, analyzing these words and images as popular cultural manifestations of social/political ideals and tensions. After the lecture, there will be a panel discussion enlisting the expertise of literature specialists and cultural scholars who will examine Tarzan as an iconic and resonant image of the twentieth century.
Vernon, an Associate Professor of English at Hendrix College, teaches courses on twentieth-century American literature, literature and the environment, writing, and American Studies, with specific interests in American war literature and Ernest Hemingway. His book On Tarzan was published in 2008, and called “a work of seminal and impressive scholarship” by the Midwest Book Review.
Other panelists include Dr. Harry Stecopoulos, Assistant Professor of English at the University of Iowa, and Dr. Guy Reynolds, Professor of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Stecopoulos teaches courses on modern US literature, culture, and performance, with specific interests in the novel, cultural studies, and postcolonial theory, while Reynolds teaches courses on American literary history, American Studies, and contemporary fiction and its global contexts, with specific interests in the digital humanities, post-war fiction, and Willa Cather.
The lecture is also held in conjunction with viewings of two Tarzan films. Tarzan of the Apes (Scott Sidney, 1918) will have a public screening in Mills A at 7:30 p.m. on Sunday, February 28, and Tarzan the Ape Man (W.S. Van Dyke, 1932) will have a public screening in Mills A at 7:30 p.m. on Monday, March 1st.
This lecture is sponsored by the English Department's Robert Drake Lectureship Fund, an endowment from the estate of the late former Murphy visitor Robert Drake. For more information, contact Dr. Carol West (west@hendrix.edu or 501-450-1240).
