Spring 2010 Humanities Lecture Series starts Feb. 4

ASU’s own Jewell Parker Rhodes, one of the state’s most popular literary figures, will open the popular lecture series at the Downtown Phoenix campus.

Rhodes’ “Racism, African Vampires and the Legend of New Orleans’ Voodoo Queen, Marie Laveau” will commence the 2010 Spring Humanities Lecture Series, which starts at 6 p.m., Feb. 4, at the Nursing and Health Innovation Building Two, 550 N. Third St., Innovation Auditorium, Room 110, Phoenix. The lecture also will include a reading by Rhodes from two of her works – Yellow Moon and Voodoo Dreams – followed by a book signing.

The lecture series and book signing is free and open to the public.

“The Humanities Lecture Series provides us with opportunities to analyze, discuss and interpret current events.  We look forward to public discussions that help us understand and appreciate various points of view on political, social and cultural issues,” says Frederick C. Corey, director of ASU’s School of Letters and Sciences and dean of University College.

The School of Letters and Sciences is designed to respond to the needs of ASU students, downtown faculty members, the challenges of higher education and constituent communities.

Rhodes is the founding director of the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing and the Piper Endowed Chair at Arizona State University.

She is also the author of five novels: Voodoo Dreams, Magic City, Douglass’ Women, Voodoo Season, Yellow Moon, and a memoir, Porch Stories: A Grandmother’s Guide to Happiness. Hurricane Levee Blues, a sixth novel, is forthcoming, as well as a young adult novel entitled Ninth Ward. She has authored two writing texts: Free Within Ourselves: Fiction Lessons for Black Authors, and The African American Guide to Writing and Publishing Non-Fiction.

Her novels have been reprinted in Germany, Italy, Canada, Turkey and the United Kingdom, and reproduced in audio, including National Public Radio’s “Selected Shorts.” Her literary honors include: a Pulitzer Prize nomination, the American Book Award, the National Endowment of the Arts Award, the Black Caucus of the American Library Award for Literary Excellence, the PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Award for Outstanding Writing, two Arizona Book Awards, and a finalist citation for the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award.

For directions, visit http://nursingandhealthasu.edu/contact/nursing-buildings.htm. For parking information, visit http://nursingandhealth.asu.edu/contact/parking/htm. For more information, call (602) 496-0638 or visit http://sls.asu.edu/news.html.