NEWS
CENTENARY COLLEGE OF LOUISIANA


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE (3/99)
Contact: Lynn Stewart or Amy Boltinghouse, Centenary News Servic, 318-869-5120 or 869-5709

Centenary to Honor Professors for 4th Edition of Internationally Recognized Text during Alumni Weekend

SHREVEPORT, LA--A reception honoring four co-authors of the fourth edition of A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature will be held on Saturday, March 27 from 3-4 p.m. in the Samuel P. Peters Research Center on Centenary's campus. The honorees are Dr. Wilfred Guerin, Dr. Earle Labor and Dr. Lee Morgan, all of Shreveport, and Dr. Jeanne Campbell Reesman of San Antonio, Texas.

A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature began in the late 1950s and was first published in 1966 as a project by Guerin, Morgan, Labor and Dr. John R. Willingham, who were English professors at Centenary. By combining their classroom experiences and their own dialogues about teaching strategies, the professors produced a text that, in their own words, "is a perfect example of the vital interaction between scholarship and teaching which can take place at a liberal arts college." For the third and fourth editions, Dr. Reesman, a Centenary alumna, joined the co-authors.

The book has become a standard introduction to the close reading of literature. It offers readers a variety of ways to interpret a piece of literature, ranging from traditional approaches through the formalist, the psychological, the mythic and archetypal, and into such contemporary approaches as feminist criticism and cultural studies.

Dr. Guerin, now retired, is the former vice chancellor for academic affairs and professor of English at LSU in Shreveport. Dr. Labor is the George A. Wilson Professor of American Literature and chairman of the Department of English at Centenary. Dr. Morgan is professor emeritus and interim provost at Centenary. Dr. Willingham is professor of English emeritus at the University of Kansas. Dr. Reesman is professor of English and dean of the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas-San Antonio.

All five professors collaborated on the fourth edition of Critical Approaches, which, like previous editions, was published by the Oxford University Press, considered the most prestigious of all scholarly and academic presses. A Handbook of Critical Approaches has also been published in six foreign language editions.

Copies of the book will be available for $25 at the reception and at the Centenary College Store on March 27 and thereafter.

-30-