UCLA professor to deliver annual Converse-Yates-Cate Lecture

Wednesday, September 12, 2012

 

UCLA professor to deliver Converse-Yates-Cate Lecture

Professor Joseph Nagy of the UCLA English Department will present this year’s Converse-Yates-Cate Lecture, titled “A Beloved Pig, a Monstrous Cat, and a Grumpy Bard in a Medieval Irish Tale,” on Monday, Sept. 17, at 7 p.m. in the Wes Watkins Center. His talk is a spin-off of a current project, which includes Celtic notions of poets and poetry, the symbolism of animals, and themes of purity and impurity.

Nagy, Professor of English, Celtic and Indo-European Studies, is the author of books and articles on medieval Irish and Welsh literature, Celtic mythology, and the comparative study of oral storytelling traditions. He is currently working on a new interpretation of the Tristan and Isolde story.

Nagy is the author of “The Wisdom of the Outlaw: Boyhood Deeds of Finn in Gaelic Narrative Tradition, and “Conversing with Angels and Ancients: Literary Myths of Medieval Ireland.” He is the founder and former editor of the Celtic Studies Association of North America Yearbook and former editor of Western Folklore. Nagy teaches courses in Old Irish and Middle Welsh, Celtic mythology, literature and folklore, and cpmarative studies of oral tradition (including epic, ballad and folktale) and mythology.

Nagy earned a Ph.D. in Celtic Languages and Literatures from Harvard University in 1978.