Southeastern NEWS

                                                       Southeastern Louisiana University
                                           Public Information  Office
                                           publicinfor@selu.edu
                                           SLU 10880, Hammond, LA 70402
                                           504/549-2341/fax 504-549-2061
    Date: 2/28/00
      Contact:                           Carol Dotson 46

BRITISH SCHOLAR WHEELER TO LECTURE ON THE VICTORIAN ERA AT SLU
     HAMMOND --   Author Michael Wheeler will give a lecture at Southeastern Louisiana
University at 3:30 p.m., Tuesday, March 14 in the Music Recital Hall.  The lecture is free and
open the public. 
     Titled "The Victorian Way of Death and the Way We Die Now," the lecture is based on
Wheeler's award-winning book "Heaven, Hell and the Victorians." Wheeler will compare
Victorian conventions associated with death and bereavement with those of our own era. 
Touching on writings by Tennyson, Dickens and Arnold, and illustrating his talk with paintings
by Millais, Bowler and Martin, Wheeler will address such topics as the role of women as
"midwives"of the deathbed, what Victorians thought heaven was like and why hell-fire
disappeared from mainstream English culture. 
     In addition to his lecture, Wheeler will also consult with Southeastern's Technical
Writing program about the Ruskin Hypertext Project, a hypertext editing of the complete works
of John Ruskin.
     Wheeler, who is on the faculty at the University of Southampton,  was recently appointed
director of the Chawton House Library, an extension of the Jane Austen home and museum, and
seat of the international Jane Austen Society. He is helping to establish a new center for the study
of early English women's writing there.  
     He was previously on the faculty of the University of Lancaster, where he founded the
Ruskin Library, designed to preserve the world's foremost collection of works by and relating to
the 19th century art and social critic, John Ruskin. He also created the Ruskin Programme, a
degree-granting research program that brings together scholars from multiple disciplines with a
common dedication to studying Ruskin. 

                                                              -SLU-
                This press release is available on the World Wide Web:
               www.selu.edu/NewsEvents/PublicInfoOffice/newsp00.htm