Astor Lecture 2023: 'The Novel as "The Book of Other People": Bernardine Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other by Way of Zadie Smith and Henry James'

The 2023 Astor Lecture will be given by Professor Dorothy Hale (University of California, Berkeley) on 'The Novel as "The Book of Other People": Bernardine Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other by Way of Zadie Smith and Henry James'.

By what power, right, or creative ability does the novelist “slip into the skin” of social others? Professor Dorothy Hale, author of The Novel and the New Ethics (2020) and Social Formalism: The Novel in Theory from Henry James to the Present (1998), shows how Bernardine Evaristo addresses the ethics and politics of otherness and othering through her novel’s complex narrative practice. Hale argues that Evaristo thereby contributes to a novelistic aesthetics of alterity, flourishing in our contemporary moment, that has its origins in the critical and creative work of Henry James.

A drinks reception will follow.

All welcome. Booking is not required; seats will be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis.