Professor Richard Yarborough discusses Ann Petry's The Street
Thursday, May 15, 2008 at 4:00 P.M.
in 193 Humanities Building
Parking Available in Lot 2, $8.00

UCLA Department of English Professor Richard Yarborough was featured on the PBS American Masters special “Novel Reflections on the American Dream” that showcased 20th-century authors and the novels that illuminate society's inequities, limitations and heartbreaks. Ann Petry's The Street recounts the tale of Lutie Johnson whose downfall is due to her inability to understand the reality of race in America and her belief that anyone can achieve wealth through hard work.

Professor Yarborough teaches African American literature and 19th- and 20-century American fiction. He is also a Faculty Research Associate with UCLA's Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies, which he directed for six years. The recipient of the UCLA Distinguished Teaching Award in 1987, he has been recognized as an Outstanding Faculty Member by the African Student Union in 1997 and he has received commendations from the City of Los Angeles (1990) and the County of Los Angeles (1991). He has published extensively on African American literature, and he is the Associate General Editor of the Heath Anthology of American Literature (5th ed., 2006). Since 1988 he has been the editor of The Library of Black Literature reprint series published by the University Press of New England.

Genre Matters:
19th Annual UCLA Southland Graduate Student Conference
Friday, May 16, 2008
at the Faculty Center

Panels of graduate students from across the country will consider Yale University Professor Wai Chee Dimock's observation that “far from being a neat catalog of what exists and what is to come, genres are a vexed attempt to deal with material that might or might not fit into that catalog.” This suggestion invites scrutiny into the materials that compose genres and the genres that compose materials.