Stanford professor to present Phi Beta Kappa Lecture at USD
A Walter A. Haas Professor in the Humanities at Stanford University since 1997, Castle will present the program, “Becoming an Orphan: Estrangement & Education.” The lecture will address development of modern Western individualism and a personal and professional response to the much-discussed phenomenon of ‘‘helicopter” or “snow-plow” parents – middle-class parents who strive to maintain an intimate, watchful and fiercely protective supervision over their college-age children. Castle will speak on behalf of the importance of imaginative rebellion against such scrutiny.
Castle’s scholarly interests include 18th-century British fiction, the Gothic novel, Jane Austen, the First World War, English art and culture of the 1920s and 1930s. An author of eight books, including “Clarissa’s Cipher,” “Masquerade and Civilization” and, most recently, “The Professor and Other Writings.” She is the editor of the award-winning collection, “The Literature of Lesbianism: A Historical Anthology from Ariosto to Stonewall.” Castle also writes regularly for London Review of Books, Atlantic and New Republic.
Sponsored by the Phi Beta Kappa Society, Castle’s lecture is free and open to the public.