Professor Christopher Ricks to lecture on interpreting poetry of Bob Dylan March 17

March 11, 2009 -- Arkansas State University-Jonesboro’s College of Humanities and Social Sciences will present a lecture by internationally known scholar, author, and critic Professor Christopher Ricks. Prof. Ricks will present “Just Like a Man: Interpreting the poetry of Bob Dylan,” on Tuesday, March 17, at 7 p.m., in ASU’s Convocation Center Auditorium (lower level, red doors). The Convocation Center is at 217 Olympic Drive, Jonesboro. The lecture is co-sponsored by ASU’s Department of English and Philosophy and the ASU Lecture-Concert Series. This lecture by Prof. Ricks is free, and the public is invited to attend.

Professor Ricks is the William M. and Sara B. Warren Professor of the Humanities at Boston University, Boston, Mass. and co-director of Boston University’s Editorial Institute. He has taught at Worcester College, Oxford, Stanford University, Palo Alto, California, and Cambridge University, where he was King Edward VII Professor of English Literature before moving to Boston University in 1986. In 2004, he had the singular honor of being elected Professor of Poetry at Oxford University, delivering three lectures a year there. Oxford’s Professor of Poetry is the only Oxford academic to be elected to the post, established in 1708. Election requires nomination from at least 12 members of Oxford’s Convocation, the university’s graduate body. Members of Convocation then vote in person to elect the winning candidate. Previous winners of that elected office include Matthew Arnold, W. H. Auden, and Seamus Heaney.

Ricks is a renowned critic, known for his essays and his books, including “The Poems of Tennyson (revised 1987),” “The New Oxford Book of Victorian Verse (1987),” “Inventions of the March Hare: Poems 1909-1917 by T. S. Eliot (1996), and “The Oxford Book of English Verse (1999).” He also serves as general poetry editor for Penguin Press.

Most recently, Prof. Ricks has received acclaim for “Dylan’s Vision of Sin (2004),” which Publishers’ Weekly described as an “affectionate critical tour-de-force” achieved by close readings of selected Dylan songs, in which Ricks details Dylan’s preoccupation with sin, virtue, and grace. Kirkus Reviews has called the book an “ambitious and intellectually freewheeling work,” examining such familiar songs as “Positively Fourth Street.” “Lay, Lady, Lay,” and "Like a Rolling Stone,"as well as less well-known works in the Dylan canon, such as “Angelina,” “Clothes Line Saga,” "Desolation Row," and "Mississippi."

Dr. Frances Hunter, associate professor of English at ASU, says "I met Prof. Ricks thirty years ago at Oxford, when he was teaching a course in T. S. Eliot’s poetry and a no-cost, no-credit course in the poetry of Bob Dylan. His deep understanding of Dylan’s role in American poetry and his excellent text have increased my students’  awareness of  Dylan’s greatness as well as my own."

Ricks is a Fellow of the British Academy and was the 2003 recipient of the $1.5 million Andrew W. Mellon Foundation’s Distinguished Achievement Award, given for significant contributions to the humanities.

For more information, contact Dr. Frances Hunter, (870) 972-2173, or e-mail her at fhunter@astate.edu.              

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Photos, from top: Boston University students Laura Swan and Abe Friedman discuss T. S. Eliot with Professor Christopher Ricks. Photo courtesy of Boston University. Prof. Christopher Ricks is caught in a pensive moment. Photo courtesy of Boston University.