Evolution and storytelling to be the subject of Open Lecture

What can evolution tell us about why we are culture-rich, storytelling, art-making, and humour-loving animals?

Professor Brian Boyd, University Distinguished Professor of English, University of Auckland, will explore this question in his Open Lecture at the University of Kent on Wednesday 24 February at 6pm.

Titled 'Open Fields: Darwin and the Humanities', the Lecture will take place in the Woolf Lecture Theatre, Woolf College on the University's Canterbury campus. The Open Lecture is free and open to all. There is disabled access to the College and the Lecture Theatre.

For the last ten years, Brian Boyd has worked on evolution and literature, from Homeric epics to Spiegelman comics. His work has been published in 12 languages and won awards in four continents.

In addition to evolutionary articles on writers from Shakespeare and Austen to Dr Seuss, he has published On the Origin of Stories: Evolution, Cognition and Fiction, which provides a comprehensive account of the evolutionary origins of art and storytelling.

For more information on the Open Lecture series visit www.kent.ac.uk/openlectures

Contact: mediaoffice@kent.ac.uk

Story published at 11:57am 5 February 2010