Dr. Barbara Ladd, professor of English at Emory University, will deliver three lectures on the theme “The North of the South: The Upper South in Literary History” for Mercer University’s 61st annual Lamar Lecture Series, the most prominent lecture series on Southern history and culture in the U.S.
 
The lectures, presented by Mercer’s Spencer B. King Jr. Center for Southern Studies, will take place Oct. 22-23 in the Presidents Dining Room, located inside the University Center on the Macon campus. They are free and open to the public.
 
Dr. Ladd works in late 19th- and 20th-century American literature, specializing in Southern literature with particular interests in race, gender, trans(south)atlantic studies, Americas studies, Americas modernism and William Faulkner.
 
She earned her Ph.D. in English from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, M.A. in English from the University of Texas at Austin, M.F.A. in creative writing from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and A.B. in English with honors from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
 
Her opening lecture, “Tidewater and Swamp,” will take place on Oct. 22 at 10 a.m., followed by “Poe In and Out of Richmond” Oct. 22 at 6 p.m. The series will conclude with “Backwater” Oct. 23 at 6 p.m.
 
“We are grateful to have Dr. Ladd on the Macon campus. She is a gifted scholar who will help our students and general public think about how the Upper South shapes our literary imaginations of the region,” said Dr. Doug Thompson, associate professor of history and director of the Spencer B. King Jr. Center for Southern Studies.
 
Dr. Ladd is the author of Resisting History: Gender, Modernity, and Authorship in William Faulkner, Zora Neale Hurston, and Eudora Welty (LSU Press, 2007) and Nationalism and the Color Line in George W. Cable, Mark Twain, and William Faulkner (LSU Press, 1997). She is currently working on a book dealing with trans(south)atlantic routes in Southern literature.
 
Dr. Ladd recently returned from a semester in Prague, where she was Fulbright Visiting Scholar in Residence in the Department of Anglophone Literatures and Cultures at Charles University.
 
The Lamar Lecture series, made possible through a bequest from the late Eugenia Dorothy Blount Lamar, began in 1957. The series promotes the permanent preservation of Southern culture, history and literature. Speakers have included nationally and internationally known scholars, such as Cleanth Brooks, James C. Cobb, Trudier Harris, Fred Hobson, Eugene Genovese and Eric Sundquist. The University of Georgia Press publishes the lectures each year.