Friends and colleagues of Frank Lentricchia will spend Thursday celebrating literature professor's work.
Lentricchia, a novelist and literary critic, is retiring at semester's end. His retirement symposium will be held Thursday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. in 225 Friedl on Duke's East Campus. It is free and open to the public. Guest speakers will include noted author Don DeLillo, who will speak at 4:30 p.m.
Lentricchia, who holds a Ph.D. from Duke, has written on American literature, poetry, modernism, the aesthetics of reading, and the theory and history of criticism. He is also the author of several novels.
"Through his decades-long career at Duke, both as student and as professor, Frank Lentricchia has been a central figure of literary study," said Michael Hardt, chair of Duke's program in literature. "He first became world-renowned as a specialist of American literature and a literary critic, and then he became himself a successful novelist."
Lentricchia's newest novel is The Accidental Pallbearer.