Library hosts faculty authorship reception
Lamar University’s Mary and John Gray Library will honor more than 40 faculty authors, co-authors, chapter authors and their families for books published from 2014 to 2016, on Monday, April 10, 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. at the Lamar University Event Center, on the 8th floor of the library.
Three of the authors, Sandra Harris, Jeff Forret, and Andy Coughlan talk about their work in a brief presentation.
“I think it’s always important that we recognize people’s accomplishments,” said David Carroll, director of Mary and John Gray Library. “We want to honor people who have written and co-authored books. The purpose of the event is to embrace how essential books are to society.”
Harris has been an educator for more than 40 years in public and private schools where she has served as teacher, principal, superintendent and university professor. She is a professor and dissertation coordinator of the Center for Doctoral Studies in Educational Leadership at Lamar University. Her vibrant career includes chairing 112 dissertations, publishing 25 books as author or co-author as well as 165 journal articles and book chapters.
Forret is a history professor at Lamar University. A social historian, Forret specializes in Southern history and slavery. In addition to U.S. history surveys, he teaches courses on the Old South, slavery, Colonial America, the early republic, antebellum America, and race and sex in American history. Forret serves as the graduate director for the history department. He has authored four books on slavery. His most recent book, Slave Against Slave: Plantation Violence in the Old South, won the prestigious Frederick Douglass Book Prize in 2016 by Yale University’s Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition.
Coughlan will speak about a book of three short plays that he and Catalina Castillon, associate professor in the Department of English and Modern Languages, co-translated into English in Rottens, Chatterboxes, and Mayors: Three Short Plays from The Spanish Golden Age. Coughlan, a native of Brighton, England, has lived in Southeast Texas for 30 years. He is a playwright, actor, director, and writer who works with the non-profit Divergent Theatre. He is the director of the University Press, the award winning student newspaper of Lamar University and an adjunct faculty member in the Department of Communication. He is also an exhibiting artist with seven solo exhibitions and numerous group shows of his paintings. Her research interests include Baroque and Neo-Baroque artistic expressions, Hispanic literature in the U.S., globalization and cultural studies and folkloric manifestations in Galicia, Spain.
The reception will feature jazz music and delicious refreshments. Admission is free and open to the public. The reception is sponsored by the Mary and John Gray Library, which is dedicated to acknowledging faculty accomplishments and encouraging scholarship.
The library is also gathering faculty-authored publications for display. Faculty members who would like to have their publications displayed should bring a copy of their business card to the 1st floor library circulation desk.
For additional information contact Penny Clark at penny.clark@lamar.edu or visit www.lamar.edu/library.
