Fall 2010

NOVEMBER 16th 7:00 PM
133 JEFFERS AUDITORIUM
(A dessert reception will follow!)

Our fall 2010 Faculty Colloquium will be "The Lost Boys and Masculinity Found," presented by Dr. David Magill, Assistant Professor of English and Women's and Gender Studies at Longwood University.

According to Magill, "From the opening plane crash and monstrous black cloud to the final season's time traveling island, the science fiction pyrotechnics of Lost bedazzled us with questions of past and present, time and space, energy and particle. But at its heart, Lost focuses as much on questions of good and evil, asking what we should do, what we can do, and what we must do. The show has centered those questions mainly on its male protagonists: Jack Shephard, John Locke, James ‘Sawyer' Ford, Sayid Jarrah, Daniel Farraday, Hugo ‘Hurley' Reyes, and of course the central antagonists Benjamin Linus and Charles Widmore. While strong female characters do enter such conversations, the central ethical conflicts of the show are dramatized through these male figures. As a result, Lost places in dialogue the social construction of contemporary masculinities and the cultural determinations of ethical behavior."

Dr. Magill teaches courses on American masculinities, literatures of diversity, and American literature. He has published and presented on race and masculinity in American culture, focusing on subjects such as John Wayne, Will Smith, 24, The Bourne Ultimatum, Firefly, and Lost. His talk on the popular TV show Lost is adapted from a forthcoming essay in Critical Essays on Lost.

For more on Dr. Magill and his lecture see this 2010 News release: http://www.longwood.edu/2010releases_29333.htm

Please invite your students!