Contact: Sasha Steinberg
STARKVILLE, Miss.—“What Is College For?” is the topic of award-winning essayist and best-selling author William “Bill” Deresiewicz’s Friday [Oct. 5] lecture at Mississippi State.
Sponsored by the university’s Judy and Bobby Shackouls Honors College, Deresiewicz’s 4 p.m. talk is free and open to the public, and takes place in the fourth-floor forum room at Griffis Hall. Alumni and members of the campus community also are welcome to attend a 5 p.m. reception honoring Judy and Bobby Shackouls in the third-floor lobby at Griffis Hall.
Based in Portland, Oregon, Deresiewicz is author of “Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life.” He taught English at Yale and Columbia before becoming a full-time writer in 2008.
Deresiewicz has published more than 250 essays and reviews, and his work has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Harper’s, The Nation, The New Republic, and The American Scholar, among other publications. He has won the Hiett Prize in the Humanities, the Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing, a Sydney Award, and is a three-time National Magazine Award nominee.
His work has been translated into 17 languages and anthologized in more than 30 college readers. He has spoken at more than 80 colleges, high schools and educational groups, and has held visiting positions at Bard, Scripps, and Claremont McKenna colleges.
Author of “A Jane Austen Education,” Deresiewicz currently is working on a book about how artists are making a living in the new economy. For more, visit www.billderesiewicz.com.
Celebrating 50 years of honors education at MSU, the university’s Judy and Bobby Shackouls Honors College was established through a generous gift from Judy and Bobby Shackouls in 2006. Bobby Shackouls, a Greenville native and an MSU chemical engineering graduate, is retired chairman, president and chief executive officer of Burlington Resources Inc. Learn more about the college at www.honors.msstate.edu.
MSU is Mississippi’s leading university, available online at www.msstate.edu.