Events

LEXINGTON, Ky.—Elaine Pagels, the Harrington Spear Paine Professor of Religion at Princeton University, will speak at Transylvania University’s Carrick Theater Thursday, Oct. 14, at 7:30 p.m. The lecture is free and open to the public. Pagels is considered a leading world authority on the Gnostic Gospels. The topic of her talk at Transylvania will be “The Discovery of the Secret Gospel of Thomas,” also the subject of her New York Times bestseller “Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas” (2003).  Other books by Pagels include “Adam, Eve and the Serpent” (1988), “The Origin of Satan” (1995), “Reading Judas: The Gospel of Judas and the Shaping of Christianity” (2007) and “The Gnostic Gospels” (1979), which was named by Modern Library as one of the 100 best books of the twentieth century and won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the National Book Award.   Pagels’ current project is a new book titled “Revelations” which will explore the New Testament Book of Revelation and other Jewish, Christian and Pagan books of Revelation written around the same time.  For more information, contact the public relations office at (859) 233-8120.

LEXINGTON, Ky.—Maurice Manning, an award-winning Kentucky poet, will give Transylvania’s fall convocation, “The Moral Vision of A World Lost,” in Haggin Auditorium Sunday, September 12 at 7 p.m. “A World Lost,” a novel by Kentucky author Wendell Berry, is this year’s First Engagements: A Community Book Project selection. First Engagements is a program for first-year students to get an introduction to the high standards of a liberal arts education at Transy through small-group discussion and analysis of a text. Many upperclassmen, faculty and staff also read the books and join the discussions that take place the first week of class. Manning has published four books of poetry, most recently “The Common Man.” In 2009 he was awarded the Hanes Poetry Prize by the Fellowship of Southern Writers. Manning teaches at Indiana University, in the Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College and is a regular faculty member for The Appalachian Writers Workshop in Hindman, Ky. His first book, “Lawrence Booth’s Book of Visions,” was selected for the Yale Series of Younger Poets in 2000. Manning’s second collection of poetry, “A Companion for Owls: Being the Commonplace Book of D. Boone, Long Hunter, Back Woodsman, & c.,” was published in 2004 by Harcourt. His poems have appeared in “The New Yorker,” “Shenandoah,” “The Southern Review,” “Washington Square,” “Green Mountains Review” and elsewhere. For more information, contact the public relations office at (859) 233-8120.