Last of Hall Center's 2002-03 Humanities Lecture Series to be at KU April 3

LAWRENCE -- The Hall Center for the Humanities at the University of Kansas announces "Shakespeare in the Closet," a lecture by KU professor David M. Bergeron. The free, public lecture, part of the 2002-03 Humanities Lecture Series, will take place at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, April 3, in the Spencer Museum of Art at KU.

Bergeron, the Conger-Gabel teaching professor of English, is an internationally recognized authority on Shakespeare. For more than 30 years, Bergeron has served on the editorial board of Shakespeare Quarterly. He also wrote several books about the Bard, including "Shakespeare's Romances and the Royal Family," "Reading and Writing in Shakespeare" and "Pageantry in the Shakespearean Theater."

"Shakespeare in the Closet" will explore literal and metaphorical closets in houses and theatres, the imagination and sexual desire in Shakespeare's time. Bergeron will focus on Hamlet and how characters find or construct private space in their world. The subject grew out of Bergeron's longtime interest in how Shakespeare and other writers of the period explored private space and in how ideas about privacy have changed over time.

Founded in 1947, the Humanities Lecture Series is the oldest continuing series at KU. In the 50-year history of the series, more than 150 eminent scholars from around the world have participated in the program, including author Vladimir Nabokov, painter Thomas Hart Benton and author Aldous Huxley. Shortly after the program's inception, a lecture by one outstanding KU faculty member each year was added to the schedule.

Bergeron is the last speaker in the 2002-03 series, which also included authors Paule Marshall and Jared Diamond and reporter Robert Kaplan.