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Westminster College Associate Professor to Discuss Trip to Amazon to Study Author Elizabeth Bishop

Posted on Thursday, November 8, 2012

NEW WILMINGTON, Pa. - Dr. Bethany Hicok, Westminster associate professor of English, will present "A Trip to the Amazon with Elizabeth Bishop" at the Faires Faculty Forum Wednesday, Nov. 14, at 11:40 a.m. in the Sebastian Mueller Theater of the McKelvey Campus Center.

Shortly after returning from the Brazilian Amazon, the American poet Elizabeth Bishop wrote in a letter that her trip was "one of the most amazing experiences of my life." Last summer, with support from the Watto Award, Hicok followed in Bishop's footsteps in Brazil, including a three-day, 500-mile boat trip down the Amazon River from Manaus to Santerem. Hicok's talk will focus on the ways that Bishop wrote about this trip in letters, notebooks, prose and poetry and how she transformed that experience into art. The importance of such trips for the literary scholar will also be highlighted.

Hicok, who joined the Westminster faculty in 2001, earned an undergraduate degree from Russell Sage College and two master's degrees and Ph.D. from the University of Rochester.  She is the author of Degrees of Freedom: American Women Poets and the Women's College, 1905-1955, and co-editor and contributing author of Elizabeth Bishop in the 21st Century: Reading the New Editions, a book of essays on Bishop. In addition to articles on Bishop, she has published articles on Marianne Moore, and Wallace Stevens, contributed chapters to three books, and delivered papers on American poetry at professional conferences.

The Faculty Forum was established in 1990 by Dr. Barbara Faires, Westminster professor of mathematics emerita, during her term as dean of the college and vice president for academic affairs.  Faculty members from all disciplines volunteer to present lectures on their current research, artistic productions, and scholarship of teaching and learning.  Each forum presents new ideas with innovative lecture techniques.

Podcasts of the forums are available here

Contact Hicok at (724) 946-6349 or email for additional information.

Contact Charlene Klassen Endrizzi, faculty development officer, at (724) 946-7189 for more information on the Faires Faculty Forum or click here.

Dr. Bethany Hicok, associate professor of English