[UPDATE 03/20/2011]: Tickets for this event are sold out! Thanks to everyone for their enthusiasm! We look forward to seeing you at this event! If you still are looking to attend, we need ushers. Ushers work at the beginning and end of the event, but are guaranteed admittance into the lecture. If you are interested in ushering, please contact shilpi.kumar@duke.edu.
[UPDATE 03/12/2011]: Ticketing for Rushdie’s Distinguished Lecture will start Tuesday Mar 15 (10am) for the Duke community and Wednesday Mar 16 (10am) for the general public. This event is free and open to the public – but TICKETS ARE REQUIRED. Tickets can be picked up on a first-come first-serve basis at the Duke Box Office in the Bryan Center or online (with a handling charge) at tickets.duke.edu (direct link: http://tickets.duke.edu/loader.asp?target=show.asp?shcode=1254 ). Please note that there’s a limit of 2 tickets per person.
Diya and the Franklin Humanities Institute (FHI) are proud to welcome the renowned author and intellectual Salman Rushdie to Duke’s campus in April 2011!
At 6 pm on Tuesday, April 12, Rushdie will deliver the FHI’s Annual Distinguished Lecture in the Humanities (“Public Events, Private Lives: Literature and Politics in the Modern World”) in Page Auditorium.
To prepare for his visit, Diya has distributed a limited number of free copies of Rushdie’s acclaimed novel Midnight’s Children to undergraduates. Winner of the Booker Prize in 1981 and of the Best of the Bookers in 2008, Midnight’s Children is a groundbreaking story about the founding of modern India and its development following independence.
Diya and the FHI are also convening an undergraduate reading group (open to every undergraduate) that will treat Rushdie’s most notable writings throughout the Spring semester. Meeting once monthly from January through April, this group will invite some of Duke’s most prominent administrators and faculty for discussions of Midnight’s Children, Satanic Verses, and Rushdie’s nonfiction, published interviews, and essays.
At 10 am on Wednesday, April 13, Diya and the FHI will host an intimate discussion with Rushdie dedicated to undergraduates who participated in the reading group, and motivated by the conversations arising from its meetings, including the question, “What does it mean to be South Asian in America?”
These events are made possible by generous support from the office of the President, Provost, Vice‐Provost for the Arts, Dean and Vice-Provost of Undergraduate Education, Center for Philosophy Arts and Literature at Duke, the North Carolina Consortium for South Asian Studies, the Duke Islamic Studies Center, and the John Spencer Bassett Memorial Fund.
