Former Carleton President, Professor To Present Lecture on Willa Cather

Former Carleton College President and long-time professor David Porter will present a lecture, “On the Divide: How a Musician and Classicist Came to Write About Willa Cather,” on Friday, April 17 at 4 p.m. in Carleton’s Gould Library Athenaeum. The event is free and open to the public.

Cather, an American author who grew up in Nebraska, is widely known for her portrayals of life on the American frontier through her books O Pioneers!, My Ántonia, and The Song of the Lark. She won the Pulitzer Prize in 1923 for One of Ours, published in 1922. She was noted for her straightforward language talking about everyday people.

Porter, currently The Tisch Family Distinguished Professor of Liberal Arts at Skidmore College, taught classics and music at Carleton College 1962-87, serving also as Carleton’s president in 1986-1987. From 1987-1999 he was president of Skidmore College, then taught at Williams College (1999-2008) and Indiana University (2008) before returning to Skidmore last year in his current position.

Porter received his B.A. from Swarthmore in 1958 and his Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1962. A scholar of classical poetry and drama and 20th century literature and music, Porter’s most recent book is On the Divide: the Many Lives of Willa Cather, and his second book on Cather will be published later this year.

For more information and disability accommodations, please contact Peter Balaam in the English department at (507) 222-7492.