ShelfLife@Texas

Attorney General Clark and President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1967.

Ramsey Clark (Plan II, ‘49), who served as attorney general under President Lyndon B. Johnson, will present a talk titled “From Civil Rights to Human Rights” on Monday, Nov. 12, from noon to 1 p.m. in the Law School’s Eidman Courtroom. The event is free and open to the public.

William Ramsey Clark was appointed assistant attorney general of the Lands Division by President John F. Kennedy in 1961, when Clark…

With the presidential debates complete and the upcoming election only a day away, many voters still remain uncertain about whom to vote for.

ShelfLife@Texas’ political round-up offers shrewd governmental, political and historical insight on the current affairs, both domestic and international, that these candidates can expect to face as President of the United States of America. Topics range from presidential leadership in divisive times to the controversial topic of nation building to the development of a “presidential accountability system.”

“Liberty’s Surest Guardian:…

In “Matters of Fact in Jane Austen: History, Location, and Celebrity,” (The Johns Hopkins University Press, August 2012) Janine Barchas, associate professor of English at The University of Texas at Austin, boldly asserts that Jane Austen’s novels allude to real names of glamorous people and places.

The first scholar to conduct extensive research into the names and locations in Austen’s fiction, Barachas offers scholars and ardent fans of Jane Austen a wealth of historical facts, while shedding an interpretive light on…

Peter LaSalle uses a single book-length sentence in his new novel, “Mariposa’s Song,” to tell of a twenty-year-old Honduran woman in the United States without documentation.  Mariposa is working as a B-girl and taxi dancer in a scruffy East Austin nightclub called El Pájaro Verde in 2005, and her story takes readers into the shadowy world that undocumented workers are too often forced to live in due to current immigration laws.

“‘Mariposa’s Song’ is a tragedy that rings distressingly true to the bone,”…

Denis Johnson, the legendary author of “Jesus’ Son, Tree of Smoke,” and “Train Dreams” and a frequent visitor to UT’s Michener Center for Writers, returns to campus on Thursday, Oct. 25, 2012 to give a free public reading at 7:30 p.m. in the Blanton Museum Auditorium.

Johnson has been a literary phenomenon since publication of his first poetry collection, “The Man Among the Seals,” at age 19. He grew up abroad and in suburban Washington, D.C., the son of a State Department official, and earned…

James Pennebaker, professor and chair of the Department of Psychology, won the $10,000 grand prize at the Hamilton Book Awards for his book, “The Secret Life of Pronouns: What Our Words Say About Us” (Bloomsbury Press , 2011) on Tuesday, Oct. 16 at the Four Seasons Hotel in Austin.

The awards are the highest honor of literary achievement given to published authors at The University of Texas at Austin. They are sponsored by the University Co-operative Society.

In “The Secret Life of…

From our first social bonding as infants to the funeral rites that mark our passing, music plays an important role in our lives, bringing us closer to one another. In “The Music between Us: Is Music a Universal Language?” (University of Chicago Press, June 2012) Kathleen Marie Higgins investigates this role, examining the features of human perception that enable music’s uncanny ability to provoke — despite its myriad forms across continents and throughout centuries — the sense of a shared human…

This October, the English department’s Master of Fine Arts program, now known as The New Writers Project, is kicking off a New Writers Tour featuring book talks by up-and-coming writers at BookPeople.

The first event will feature a reading and signing by Antoine Wilson, author of “Panorama City” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Sept. 2012) on Thursday, Oct. 11 at 7 p.m. The book talks are free and open to the public. Go to this website for more details.

About the book: Open Porter,…

Best-selling author Karen Russell will come to campus on Thursday, Sept. 27 to talk about her novel “Swmaplandia!” and other literary works. The event, hosted by the Plan II Honors Program, will be held at 7 p.m. in the Joynes Reading Room, located on the east side of the Carothers Building.

Russell’s debut novel, “Swamplandia!” (Thorndike Press, 2011) tells the story of the Bigtree family, which runs an alligator-wrestling theme park deep in the Florida Everglades. The 13-year-old narrator sets out on…

Matthew Zapruder

Poet Matthew Zapruder visits campus this month as part of the Michener Center for Writers literary reading series. He will read at 7:30 p.m., Thursday, Sept. 20, at the Avaya Auditorium, ACE 2.302, at an event which is free and open to students and the general public.

Zapruder’s books of poetry include “Come On All You Ghosts” and “The Pajamaist,” both from Copper Canyon, and “American Linden,” from Tupelo Press. The New York Times has praised his “razor eye for the remnants and revenants of modern…