The Big Read Keynote and Symposium

The Big Read Keynote and Symposium

The Massillon Museum, with the collaboration of the Massillon Public Library, and Kent State University Stark Campus, will present a keynote address on Thursday, March 12, and a symposium on Saturday, March 14, both relating to The Big Read and this year’s book selection, The Age of Innocence. The Museum and collaborating institutions and individuals will celebrate The Big Read throughout the month of March.

Keynote

Edith Wharton scholar Carol Singley will present the Keynote program in the auditorium of the Fine Arts Building at Kent State University Stark Campus on Thursday, March 12, at 7:00 p.m. State Representative Scott Oelslager will comment on "The Big Read: Western Stark County Reads The Age of Innocence" and introduce the speaker. The program is free and no reservations are required.

Singley is Associate Professor of English at Rutgers University-Camden, where she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in American literature and culture, women’s literature, and the literature of childhood. She directs the undergraduate Liberal Studies program, co-directs the American Studies program, and is a fellow at the Center for Children and Childhood Studies.

An internationally known scholar of Edith Wharton, she is the author of Edith Wharton: Matters of Mind and Spirit (Cambridge University Press, 1995, paperback 1998). She is editor of the New Riverside Edition of The Age of Innocence (2000), with more than 500 notes on the novel and selected readings. She is editor of The Historical Guide to Edith Wharton, published by Oxford University Press (3003), a collection of original essays on Wharton in historical context. She is also the editor of Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth: A Casebook (Oxford University Press, 2003), a book of essays on the novel. She is past president of the Edith Wharton Society.

Carol Singley has published articles on nineteenth- and twentieth-century American writers, feminist theory, composition and rhetoric, and peer tutoring. She edited two collections of scholarly essays: Anxious Power: Reading, Writing, and Ambivalence in Narrative by Women (State University of New York Press, 1993) and The Calvinist Roots of the Modern Era (University Press of New England, 1997).

She is currently writing a book on representations of adoption in American literature and culture, which includes chapters on Wharton’s novel Summer and novella The Old Maid. This book examines adoption practices and attitudes toward adoption in the literature from colonial times to the twentieth century. She is co-founder and co-chair of the Alliance for the Study of Adoption, Identity and Kinship, an organization of scholars from diverse disciplines interested adoption and related issues such as personal and society identity and family construction. An adoptive mother, she lives in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, with her husband and two sons.

Symposium

The symposium, which is open to everyone, will offer contact hours for English, art, and history teachers who participate. Advance registration is required. Sign-in will begin at Kent State University Stark Campus at 9:00 a.m. and the symposium will conclude at 3:00 p.m. The $15 registration fee includes lunch.

Individual sessions will focus on cultural topics related to Edith Wharton’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Age of Innocence. Dr. Ann Coen will discuss the art The Gilded Age; Dr. Leslie Heaphy will address the historical context of the book and Wharton’s life; Dr. Andrea Adolph will talk about feminism of the era and how it is exhibited in women’s literature of the time (c. 1890–1914); and Christine Shearer and Jill Malusky Bacon of the Massillon Museum will lead an interdisciplinary discussion about the architecture and social environment of The Gilded Age.

Contact the Massillon Museum for registration and credit information: 330-833-4061.

General Information about “The Big Read: Western Stark County Reads The Age of Innocence”

The Big Read is an initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) designed to restore reading to the center of American culture. The NEA presents the Big Read in partnership with the Institute of Museum and Library Services and in cooperation with Arts Midwest.

Local organizations and individuals collaborating with the Massillon Museum include: the Massillon Public Library; the Lions Lincoln Theatre; Mayor Francis H. Cicchinelli; Dr. Leslie Heaphy, Dr. Robert Sturr, Dr. Anne Coen, Dr. Andrea Adolph, and Kent State University Stark Campus; Jason Norris; John Kiste and the Canton/Stark County Convention and Visitors’ Bureau; Rotary Club of Massillon; the Massillon Area Chamber of Commerce; The Independent; the Fairless, Jackson, Tuslaw, and Massillon school systems; State Representative Scott Oelslager; Gretchen Schrantz; Massillon Cable TV; the Chit Chat Coffee Shop; George Nicholis; Camille Leslie; Brian Centrone; Eric Myers; Richard Gercken; The Canton Symphony Orchestra; The Amherst Rose and Parlour Gift Shoppe; Kozmo’s Grille; St. Timothy’s Church; Massillon Family YMCA; Hampton Inn Massillon;and many community volunteers.

Copies of The Age of Innocence may be checked out at the Massillon Public Library. Books may be purchased at the Massillon Museum (121 Lincoln Way East in downtown Massillon), the Massillon Public Library (208 Lincoln Way East in downtown Massillon), and The Village Bookshelf (746 Amherst Road Northeast in Massillon). Free readers' guides are available at the Museum, the Library, and at offices and businesses throughout the area. Everyone who reads the book will be encouraged to sign a “Victorian calling card” to be displayed at the Museum or the Library.

For more information about western Stark County’s Big Read project, call the Massillon Museum at 330-833-4061 or visit

www.massillonmuseum.org or www.NEABigRead.org.

Media Contacts:

Christine Shearer - Massillon Museum Executive Director - 330-833-4061

Camille Leslie - Massillon Public Library Director - 330-833-9831

Jill Malusky Bacon - Massillon Museum Educator - 330-833-4061