MALAS 25th Anniversary Commencement featuring the 1st Annual Foucault/Fuentes Lecture in Cultural Studies | Paul Ryan Scheider, Purdue University

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With 21 MAs being handed out for 21 extraordinary agents of interdiscplinary and cultural studies, Commencement 2013 is the largest MALAS graduation cohort in the program's history.

This year our commencement will feature our 1st Michel Foucault/Carlos Fuentes Lecture on Cultural Studies--Professor Ryan Schneider, from Purdue University will treat us to a presentation entitled: "Madness and Delinquency. . . or, What Would You Do if Carlos Fuentes and Michel Foucault Showed Up at Your MALAS Graduation Party? "

MALAS Commencement is on Sunday, 10am, on the SDSU main campus in West Commons 220--no tickets are necessary and MALAS MAs need not feel the need to wear their graduation robes (though if you have them, why not strut your academic finery!???). Feel free to bring, friends, family, and (best yet) prospective folks you think might like to be part of the MALAS experience.

More on our first Foucault/Fuentes speaker:

Ryan Schneider holds a B.A. in History and Literature from Harvard as well as an M.A. and a Ph.D. in English from Duke.  He specializes in nineteenth-century American and African American literature with particular emphasis on Transcendentalism, Critical Race Theory, and intellectual history. His current research focuses on Cognitive Literary Studies, and his book, The Public Intellectualism of Ralph Waldo Emerson and W.E.B. Du Bois: Emotional Dimensions of Race and Reform, was published in 2010 by Palgrave Macmillan as part of their Cognitive Studies in Literature and Performance series.

Professor Schneider’s articles have appeared in American Transcendental Quarterly, Arizona Quarterly, and edited collections including No More Separate Spheres!: A Next Wave American Studies Reader, (Duke University Press), and Boys Don’t Cry?: Rethinking Narratives of Masculinity and Emotion in the U.S., (Columbia University Press). He also has contributed essays to The Oxford Companion to Women's Writing in the United States and W.E.B. Du Bois: An Encyclopedia. He currently is working on a book that examines the role of Transcendentalism in the construction and consolidation of various dimensions of ethnic identity in antebellum New England.

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In addition to serving as Director of Graduate Studies for the English Department, Professor Schneider teaches a wide range of courses in both English and American Studies.  He has received numerous teaching awards at both the undergraduate and graduate levels and is a two-time recipient of the Center for Undergraduate Instructional Excellence Fellowship. He also is a founding member of the Cancer, Culture, and Community Program (CCC): a joint venture involving the College of Liberal Arts and the Oncological Sciences Center in Discovery Park that explores the human response to cancer as expressed through art and literature. His first job in academe was as an Assistant Professor of English and Comparative Literature--MALAS is excited to bring Dr. Schneider back to SDSU for this special event.