Lecture: Maria DiBattista February 24, 2005

Maria DiBattista, author and professor of English and comparative literature at Princeton University, will present a talk titled ?Fast Talking Dames? at 4 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 24 at Carleton College?s Gould Library Athenaeum. The event is free and open to the public.

Specializing in 20th literature and film, the European novel and narrative theory, DiBattista has long been fascinated by Hollywood dames?female movie stars of the 1930s and 40s who had confidence, intelligence and wit. Her childhood love of movies eventually brought her to pursue film studies and to write a book, also titled ?Fast Talking Dames,? about the film heroines she admired. The book chronicles the emerging changes in the relationship between the sexes as movies such as ?His Girl Friday? and ?My Man Godfrey? were released, and focuses on various women in film, including Jean Harlow, Katherine Hepburn and Claudette Colbert. The New York Times Book Review said that a ?brief quotation can do only partial justice to the loving acuity with which DiBattista considers this band of admirable women.? In an interview with the Princeton Weekly Bulletin, DiBattista said that, from her perspective, fast-talking movie dames no longer exist in today?s world.

DiBattista is chair of the film studies committee at Princeton University and a Master of Rockefeller College. She has received the University?s President?s Distinguished Teaching Award and the Howard T. Behrman Award for Distinguished Achievement in the Humanities. She is the author of numerous books and articles on modern literature and film, such as ?Virginia Woolf: The Fables of Anon and First Love: The Affections of Modern Fiction? and is the co-editor of and contributor to ?High and Low Moderns: British Literature and Culture 1889-1939.?

For more information and disability accommodations, call Carleton?s library at (507) 646-4260.