Spring 2012
- Exploring the Arctic from Space
- What has Facebook done to us?
- What has Facebook done to us?
- Is complex life a freak accident?
- The triumph of Human Rights: dream or nightmare?
- The lure of the Kremlin: the court of Ivan the Terrible and global networks in the 16th century
- Cutting to cure cancer the 'the limits set by nature'
- The mystery of Master Humphrey: one of Dickens's most enigmatic characters
- John Bull vs Stinkomalee: Tory opposition in the early days of the University of London (now UCL)
- The metaphysics of concrete
- Genetic testing for risk of heart disease: fact or fiction?
- From Euclid to modern geometry: do the angles of a triangle really add up to 180?
- The Great American Novel: how and why?
- Patents stop people doing things. So why are they a good thing?
- Having it all: dispelling the myths about work and motherhood
- The search for genius and Einstein's brain
- 3D imaging: nanotechnology and the quest for better medical sensors
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The Great American Novel: how and why?
13 March 2012
1 March 2012
Dr Kasia Boddy (UCL English Language & Literature)
Parodied almost as soon as it was announced, and generally regarded as a topic beneath the remit of serious literary criticism, the Great American Novel enterprise has proved more durable and more various than almost any other in American literary culture. It remains the bench-mark for literary ambition, prestige, and sales. This lecture, to mark World Book Day, considers some of the forms the Great American Novel has taken in its 150-year history and asks what social, political, moral, commercial and aesthetic needs it so persistently promises to serve.
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