November 10, 2000
Director of Media Relations
413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass—Journalist Christopher Hitchens will speak on Thursday, Dec. 7, at 7 p.m. in the Stirn Auditorium at Amherst College, on the topic of “Unacknowledged Legislation: Writers in the Public Sphere.” His talk is free and open to the public.

Hitchens is the author of numerous books, including, most recently, No One Left To Lie To: The Triangulations of William Jefferson Clinton, The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice and Vanity Fair’s Hollywood. He is a columnist for Vanity Fair and The Nation, as well as a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books, The London Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement, Harper’s and The New Left Review. He has been a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and at the University of Pittsburgh, and is currently a professor at the New School for Social Research.

Hitchens’s talk, drawing upon his forthcoming book of essays by the same title, takes inspiration from Shelley’s description of the poet as an “unacknowledged legislator,” and will examine the encounter between literature and politics.

Edward Said writes that “Christopher Hitchens’ writing has sweep and flair. He is accurate where others are merely dutiful, unpredictable where the tendency is to go for the cliché. In short, brilliant. And he is an internationalist, respectfully at home where others are merely brash or provincial.”

The event is sponsored by the English Department and the Lamont Fund of Amherst College.

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