French professor Ralph Albanese Jr. to speak at Kenyon College

GAMBIER, Ohio (March 17, 2005) Ralph Albanese Jr., Dunavant Professor of French at the University of Memphis, will give a lecture at Kenyon College entitled "Corneille as a Cultural Icon in France from the Third Republic to Today" at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, March 24, in the College's Olin Auditorium.

Albanese is a distinguished scholar of seventeenth-century France, the age of French classicism in literature and the arts. He has written extensively on the teaching of literature within the institution of French national education. Albanese has published more than fifty articles on seventeenth-century French literature, sociocriticism, and foreign-language teaching.

No previous knowledge of French or French literature is required to enjoy this talk on the role of playwright Pierre Corneille in the creation of modern French national identity since the late nineteenth century.

Albanese's talk is sponsored by the Edward Harvey Memorial Lecture Series, created to honor the memory of the late Kenyon Professor of French J. Edward Harvey, who taught at the College from 1948 until his retirement in 1987.