Postlethwaite to deliver fall Mellby Lecture on ‘The Monster’s Plot’
St. Olaf College Professor of English Diana Postlethwaite will deliver the fall Mellby Lecture, titled The Monster’s Plot: Memory, Intelligence, and Time in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, on November 14.
The lecture, which will begin at 7:30 p.m. in Viking Theater in Buntrock Commons, is free and open to the public. It will be streamed live and archived online.
Postlethwaite’s greatest academic interests are 19th-century British fiction, and the Victorian period in general, as well as film studies. She has published a book, articles, and reviews on George Eliot and 19th-century scientific psychology, including Making it Whole: A Victorian Circle and the Shape of Their World and “George Eliot and Science” in The Cambridge Companion to George Eliot.
A Minnesota native, Postlethwaite graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard University before earning her doctorate from Yale University. She went on to teach at Yale, the University
of Chicago, and Mount Holyoke College before joining the St. Olaf English faculty in 1988.
About the Mellby Lecture
The annual Mellby Lectures are named in remembrance of St. Olaf faculty member Carl A. Mellby and were established in 1983 to give professors the opportunity to share their research with the public. Mellby, known as “the father of social sciences” at St. Olaf, started the first courses in economics, sociology, political science, and art history at the college. He was professor and administrator from 1901 to 1949, taught Greek, German, French, religion, and philosophy, and is credited with creating the college’s honor system.