BRATTLEBORO — Mount Holyoke College professor Christopher Benfey will discuss the effect Gilded Age New England and Old Japan had on each other in a talk at Brooks Memorial Library in Brattleboro on Oct. 5.
His talk, “The Great Wave: New England Misfits, Japanese Eccentrics, and the Opening of Old Japan,” is part of the Vermont Humanities Council's First Wednesdays lecture series and takes place at 7 p.m.
Benfey will look at how Gilded Age New England intellectuals, disaffected by America's materialistic culture, treasured the image of Old Japan while the Japanese looked to New England for how to Westernize their country.
Benfey is dean of faculty and Mellon Professor of English at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Mass. He has emerged over the past decade as a prolific critic, essayist, and author, whose reviews in The New York Times Sunday Book Review, The New Republic, The New York Review of Books, and the Times Literary Supplement have established him as a distinguished contemporary arbiter of modern and late 20th-century American literature.
The Vermont Humanities Council's First Wednesdays series is held on the first Wednesday of every month from October through May, featuring speakers of national and regional renown. Talks in Brattleboro are held at Brooks Memorial Library.
Upcoming Brattleboro talks include “100 Years since Triangle: The Fire That Seared a Nation's Conscience” with Dartmouth professor Annelise Orleck on Nov. 2; “American Oracle: The Civil War in the Civil Rights Era” with Race and Reunion author David Blight on Dec. 7; and “An Evening with Ken Burns” with acclaimed PBS filmmaker Ken Burns on Jan. 4 (to be held at Latchis Theatre).
The Vermont Department of Libraries is the statewide underwriter of First Wednesdays. Local underwriters are Brattleboro Savings & Loan, Downs Rachlin Martin PLLC, Friends of Brooks Memorial Library, and Windham World Affairs Council of Vermont.
For more information, contact Brooks Memorial Library at 802-254-5290 or contact the Vermont Humanities Council at 802-262-2626 or by e-mail.