Acclaimed Author Russell Banks to Speak at Harvard

This fall, Harvard Divinity School brings Russell Banks, one of the United States' most celebrated writers of contemporary fiction, to Harvard to deliver the annual Ingersoll Lecture on Immortality.

The talk will take place on Wednesday, November 5, at 5:15 pm, Sanders Theatre, Memorial Hall. Tickets will be available at the door. Please visit the HDS public events calendar for more information.

Banks's topic will be "Feeding Moloch: The Sacrifice of Children on the Altar of Capitalism." He will argue that immortality, if it exists, lies with people's descendants—their children, and their children’s children, and on. In the modern era, he states, it has become increasingly difficult to protect children from dangerous forces in the world. Today, children have become the largest single segment of the consumer economy.

"Our children, who will become us, have been delivered up to the economy, just as we—their parents and grandparents—were, but to a far greater degree," he explains. "Having been targeted, commodified, and de-humanized, made into coinage, they have essentially been abandoned."

Banks, who was born in Newton, Massachusetts, is the author of 20 works of fiction, including the novels Continental Drift, Rule of the Bone, Cloudsplitter, and, most recently, Lost Memory of Skin, as well as 6 short-story collections.

Two of his novels, The Sweet Hereafter and Affliction, were made into award-winning motion pictures, and three others are currently in development. Banks is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and is past President of the International Parliament of Writers, as well as the founding President of the Cities of Refuge North America. He is a recipient of Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Arts grants and a St. Lawrence Prize for fiction.

The Ingersoll Lecture, which dates to 1896, has been delivered by such distinguished luminaries as Paul Tillich (1962), Stephen J. Gould (1990), and Toni Morrison (2012).

In preparation for Banks's visit, the Harvard community is invited to participate in three seminars focusing on questions at the intersection of religion and literature, tragedy and children, sacrifice and capitalism, the practice of writing, and the search for redemption. Leading writers and scholars will invite participants to consider the themes at the heart of Banks' work.

The seminar series, titled "The Sacrifice of Children on the Altar of Capitalism: Bearing Witness in the Writings of Russell Banks," is convened by Davíd Carrasco, Neil L. Rudenstine Professor of the Study of Latin America, and Stephanie Paulsell, Houghton Professor of the Practice of Ministry Studies.

"Russell Banks is one of our most acclaimed and powerful writers, and the Divinity School does the Harvard community a great service by organizing this seminar in preparation for his Ingersoll Lecture this November," said Carrasco.

The seminars will take place September 19 and October 10, at noon, in Andover Hall's Braun Room. A final session will take place on November 5 at a location to be announced. 

All members of the Harvard community committed to reading and discussing Banks's work throughout the semester are welcome to sign up by emailing Charlene Higbe. Press inquiries should be directed to Jonathan Beasley.