Patrick Brantlinger

About Ian Fletcher

Patrick Brantlinger, this year's Ian Fletcher Lecturer, is a man of wide interests and significant accomplishments. Currently Professor of English at Indiana University, he is the author of a number of often-cited books in the field of Victorian Studies including The Spirit of Reform (1977), Rule of Darkness: British Literature and Imperialism, 1830-1900 (1988), and, more recently, The Reading Lesson: Mass Literacy as Threat in British Fiction (1998). In addition, his interests in culture and history have won him a wider scholarly audience as he has ranged broadly over territory such as economic history, cultural studies theory, and theories of mass culture. Books such as Bread and Circuses: Theories of Mass Culture As Social Decay (1983), Crusoe's Footprints: Cultural Studies in Britain and America (1990), and Fictions of State: Culture and Credit in Britain, 1694-1994 (1994) represent this side of Brantlinger: the cultural historian of impressive erudition. He served for ten years as editor of Victorian Studies and has won numerous fellowships and awards including a Guggenheim and a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship. For this year's Fletcher Lecture he will be speaking on the topic "Cannibals and Missionaries."