About The Campbell Lecture Series

Rice University’s School of Humanities has established a literary studies lecture series, thanks to a $1 million contribution from alumnus T.C. Campbell ’34. The School of Humanities worked with Mr. Campbell to create a lecture series that would support both parties’ commitment to the study of literature. The end result is an annual 20-year lecture series that will be open to the public and present original ideas on topics of interest in literature.

Former U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Pinksy inaugurated the series in 2005 with three lectures on small town America, drawing on the works of Willa Cather, Sinclair Lewis, William Faulkner, Preston Sturges and others. In October 2006 author Ha Jin presented his first work of literary criticism, on the topic of the writer in exile, juxtaposing Nabokov and Conrad, reviewing Solzhenitsyn’s exile, and introducing the works of some contemporary Chinese writers in exile. The 2007 series featured author Alix Ohlin examining the relationship between nature and art. She structured the three talks around Shakespeare's "The Tempest," discussing artists who change the way people look at nature; crises in the natural world; and birds in art and literature.

A community advisory committee chaired by Dean Wihl has been set up to organize the activities of the lecture series and consists of Susan Wood, the Gladys Louise Fox Chair in English; Lauren Linn, assistant director of university events at Rice; Karl Kilian, Director of Programs at the Menil Collection; Rich Levy, executive director of Inprint; James Gibbons, Opinion Page editor of the Houston Chronicle; and Alan Thomas, editorial director for the humanities and sciences at the University of Chicago Press.