Gerald Graff, professor of English and education and dean of curriculum and instruction at the University of Illinois at Chicago, will give a lecture titled "Controversy Clarifies" at 7 p.m. Thursday, April 3, in 1-101 Dewey Hall on the University of Rochester's River Campus.
Graff's many books and articles include Beyond the Culture Wars, winner of the American Book Award, and Professing Literature, considered the standard study of the teaching of English at colleges and universities.
In his most recent book, Clueless in Academe: How Schooling Obscures the Life of the Mind, Graff examines how schools and colleges make the intellectual life seem obscure and beyond normal learning capacities and looks at how rigorous inquiry, reflection, and debate can be made a part of everyday life and more accessible to students. He is currently working with his wife, Cathy Birkenstein-Graff, on a textbook, A Short Guide to Argument, which will be a how-to companion to Clueless in Academe.
Graff's lecture is cosponsored by the George H. Ford Fund for Visiting Scholars in the graduate program of the Department of English and by the College Writing Program. For more information, call (585) 275-4092.