Dr. John Lowe to Give 2nd Annual Ernest J. Gaines Lecture

The Ernest J. Gaines Center, in conjunction with the Friends of the Humanities, will host the Second Annual Ernest J. Gaines Lecture on November 21, 2014 at 1:00 pm in the Ernest J. Gaines Center on the third floor of Edith Garland Dupré Library. Dr. John Lowe, Barbara Methvin Professor of English at the University of Georgia, will be the lecturer; he will be presenting "First Threads of the Bayonne Tapestry:  The Achievement of Catherine Carmier" to help us commemorate the 50th anniversary of Gaines’ first novel publication, Catherine Carmier (1964). Currently, Dr. Lowe is working on a biography of Ernest J. Gaines, and his lecture will pull from the early drafts of Catherine Carmier housed within the archives of the Ernest J. Gaines Center. 

Formerly the Robert Penn Warren Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature and Founding Director of the Program in Louisiana and Caribbean Studies at Louisiana State University, Dr. Lowe has written and presented extensively on Southern literature and Caribbean literature. Amongst his numerous publications, he edited Conversations with Ernest Gaines (University of Mississippi Press 1995), a collection of interviews with Ernest Gaines from the late 1960s through Dr. Lowe’s interview with him in 1995. In 2008, Dr. Lowe received the 2008 Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States Lifetime Achievement Award for Distinguished Contributions to American Ethnic Literature.

For more information, please contact the Ernest J. Gaines Center at gainescenter@louisiana.edu or by phone at (337)-482-1848. Opened in the 2010, the Ernest J. Gaines Center is an international center for scholarship, programming, and community outreach on Ernest J. Gaines and his work. The center honors the work of UL Lafayette’s Writer-In-Residence Emeritus and provides a space for scholars and students to work with the Gaines papers and manuscripts.