Professor to offer free public lectures

Visiting professor Paul Eggert will give two free public lectures in February on the subject of the restoration of historic buildings and paintings, textual studies and authorship.

The lectures will be in the Faculty Club conference room at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 8 and Tuesday, Feb. 29. Each lecture will be followed by a reception.

Eggert, who is visiting from the University of New South Wales in Canberra, Australia, is a fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. He has published numerous influential essays on editorial theory and edited the works of D.H. Lawrence, Henry Kingsley and Joseph Conrad. He is the author of a full-scale critical edition of “The Boy in the Bush” and “Twilight in Italy and Other Essays” for the Cambridge Lawrence series and edited the counterpart titles for the Penguin Lawrence Series. He is director of the Australian Scholarly Editions Center at the University of New South Wales, founder of the Colonial Texts Series and general editor of the Academy Editions of Australian Literature.

Paul Eggert

The first lecture, “The Golden Stain of Time: The Restoration of Historic Houses, and Textual Studies,” examines the growing emphasis placed on heritage and preserving the past. Specifically, from a textual studies vantage point, the lecture considers two recent examples - a stately home that had burnt down and a convict barracks that had been gutted - that have generated “acute pressure.” The examples illuminate larger questions of philosophy and method in the representation of the past.

The second lecture, “The Golden Stain of Time: The Forgery of Historical Documents, Scandals of Authorship and the Restoration of Paintings,” seeks to clarify terms like authenticity, authorship, restoration and fakery. Eggert will also consider the relevance of questioning authenticity amid the growing influence of post-structuralist theory - a practice that questions the entire concept of authorship and intent.

Eggert is teaching one of the four core courses of the textual studies program (seminar and textual theory) and an undergraduate course on travel literature at the UW during the winter term. His public lectures are sponsored by the Kenneth S. Allen Library Endowment Fund, the Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities, the department of English, the department of comparative literature and the textual studies program. ¶