[Cwgrad-announcements] Fwd: A Reading by Professor Rob Nixon - April 9 - 3:00 p.m.

[D Charles Whitney]

>
>
> The Prince of Patience
> A Chronicle Of Caring
>
> A reading by Professor Rob Nixon
>
> April 9, 2008
> 3:oo PM
> HMNSS 1500
>
>
> Professor Nixon will be reading from his non-fiction book about  
> care giving. The book is shaped around his schizophrenic brother  
> who, in their mother’s dying years, has become her full-time,  
> devoted caregiver.  This is a story of male caring that has worked  
> out against the odds; it’s a story of a son returning to a mother  
> (who suffers from vascular dementia) the care she gave him when he  
> was mentally deranged. Years ago, the psychiatrists had urged her  
> to have him permanently committed. Instead, at great physical risk  
> to herself, she took him back into her home.
> Caring knows no guarantees. To friends, to family, to lovers, we  
> typically give (and take) unequally. What Nixon recounts in this  
> story is an arc of improbable reciprocity: how his mother’s refusal  
> to abandon his brother to an institutional fate has spared her such  
> a fate in her dying years. She is dying an intimate, peopled death  
> in the comfort of her own home. He in turn, unusual for a man, has  
> discovered through her a vocation as a caregiver, a stabilizing  
> purpose amidst his unsettled life on earth.
>
>
> Professor Rob Nixon received his Ph.D. from Columbia University  
> where he worked under Edward Said. Nixon was a professor in the  
> Columbia University English Department from 1987 through 1999. He  
> also held a research professorship at the University of London for  
> three years. Since 1999, he has held the Rachel Carson  
> Professorship of English and Creative Writing at the University of  
> Wisconsin, Madison, where he teaches environmental studies,  
> postcolonial studies, and creative nonfiction. He is a frequent  
> contributor to the New York Times and his work has also appeared in  
> the New Yorker, the Village Voice, the Atlantic Monthly, the  
> Nation, Outside, Slate, the London Review of Books, the Guardian  
> (UK), Grand Street, and the Times Literary Supplement.
> Nixon's travel memoir, Dreambirds. The Natural History of a  
> Fantasy, was selected by GQ as one of the ten best books of the  
> year, was a New York Times notable book of the year, and was  
> serialized on BBC radio. Nixon will be reading from a new work of  
> nonfiction, The Prince of Patience.
>
>
> This event is sponsored by the Center for Ideas and Society and is  
> free and open to the public. For further information regarding this  
> or any event sponsored by the Center for Ideas and Society, please  
> contact us at 951.UCR.IDEA or visit our website at  
> ideasandsociety.ucr.edu
>
>
>
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> Laura Lozon
> Assistant Director
> UC Riverside
> Center for Ideas and Society
> 227 C Highlander Hall
> Riverside, CA 92521
> 951-827-1555 (phone)
> 951-827-6377 (fax)
> 951-333-4587 (cell)
>

D Charles Whitney, Professor and Chair
Department of Creative Writing, 4119 INTS
U of California, Riverside CA 92521
951.827.6076    FAX 951.827.3619
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