Dr. Kristianne Kalata Vaccaro, Westminster College visiting assistant professor of English, will present "Transatlantic Acts: Nation, Self-Narration, and Celebrity in Victorian and Modernist Women's Autobiography" at the Bleasby Colloquium Thursday, Sept. 18, at 7 p.m. in the Sebastian Mueller Theater of the McKelvey Campus Center. The event is free and open to the public.

Vaccaro said, "The subject is my recently-defended dissertation, which examines select Victorian and Modernist women writers' autobiographical narratives with attention to the presence of transatlantic travel-bodily and textual, between Europe and America. This transatlantic element, I argue, links private processes of self-narration to public critiques of nation-specific systems, customs, and traditions. As a result, the texts under study manipulate their authors' celebrity status and delight in their transatlantic public, shrewdly engaging hybrid narrative strategies aimed at British and/or American audiences, both literary and popular."

Vaccaro earned her undergraduate degree from Westminster College and master's and Ph.D. from Duquesne University.

This colloquium is part of the George Bleasby Colloquia, a series of literary events in honor of the late Dr. Bleasby, who chaired the Department of English at Westminster from 1954-75.

Contact Vaccaro at (724) 946-7350 or e-mail vaccarkk@westminster.edu for more information.

Dr. Kristianne Kalata Vaccaro