Author Robert Bringhurst joins the ranks of distinguished scholars such as Northrop Frye and Hugh MacLennan when he delivers the 1998 Sedgewick Memorial Lecture next month.
Named for Garnett Sedgewick, the first head of UBC's Dept. of English, the lecture has been a campus tradition for more than 30 years.
Bringhurst will refer to Sedgewick's 1928 essay on unity in the humanities while discussing his own interest in First Nations cultures and literatures.
A former lecturer in UBC's departments of English and Creative Writing, Bringhurst has written critical essays, 15 volumes of poetry, several works for theatre and film and nine books including the forthcoming Sharp as a Knife: An Introduction to Classical Haida Literature.
Bringhurst's lecture, in the Great Hall of Green College at 4 p.m. on Thursday, March 5, is held in conjunction with a conference, Perspective on Native American Oral Literatures, that runs March 5-8.
Hosted by Green College and the First Nations House of Learning, the conference will bring together speakers, writers and storytellers such as scholar Dennis Tedlock, playwright Drew Hayden Taylor and storyteller Vi Hilbert.