Paperback Launch: Cecilia Konchar Farr's The Ulysses Delusion

Join us as we celebrate the paperback release of The Ulysses Delusion: Rethinking Standards of Literary Merit, the latest book of literary criticism and cultural commentary from St. Catherine University professor Cecilia Konchar Farr. Meet in the Performance Hall for a reception (wine provided! ?) and brief reading from Cecilia, followed by book signing. LEARN MORE.

Popular fiction follows literature professors wherever they go. At coffee shops or out for drinks, after faculty meetings or classes, even at family reunions––they are persistently pressed to talk about bestselling novels. Questions immediately follow: What do I mean when I say a book is “good”? Why do contemporary novels like these, conversations like these, matter to professors of literature? Shouldn’t they be spending their time re-reading The Great Gatsby? The Ulysses Delusion confronts these questions and answers their call for more engaged conversations about books. Through topics like the Oprah’s Book Club, Harry Potter, and Chick Lit, Cecilia Konchar Farr explores the lively, democratic, and gendered history of novels in the US as a context for understanding how avid readers and literary professionals have come to assess them so differently.

CECILIA KONCHAR FARR is Chair of English, Carondelet Scholar, and Professor of English and Women’s Studies in the Women’s College at St. Kate’s. Her research interests all circle around novels—their history, their (women) readers, and their social, educational, aesthetic, and political work. Her previous work includes compiling and editing A Wizard of Their Age: Critical Essays from the Harry Potter Generation (SUNY 2015) in collaboration with a team of student editors, and Reading Oprah: How Oprah’s Book Club Changed the Way America Reads (SUNY 2004). She also enjoys talking about novels with St. Kate’s alumnae in Conversations with Books, a tradition of more than fifty years begun by Professor Catherine Lupori.