William E. Brady, professor emeritus of English, will give the dedication address, "`The Right Evenness of Strangeness and Familiarity': The Teaching of Howard Wilson," at 4:30 p.m., Friday, Feb. 13, in the newly refurbished Howard Wilson House, 182 W. South Street on the Knox campus. The dedication is free and open to the public.
During the fall of 1997, the Wilson House was renovated to hold an 80-seat room for seminars, classes and public lectures. The renovation was supported by a gift in Wilson's memory from an anonymous donor. The single-level brick bungalow was formerly used for meetings by the College's sororities.
"Howard Wilson taught many historical courses in English and American literature, but he was not a historian," Brady explained. "He had a distinctive style of teaching that stimulated the imagination of his students by not telling the whole story. He sought a balance of imagination and fact--what Henry James called `the right evenness of strangeness and familiarity,' in his novel "The Aspern Papers.'"
A Shakespeare scholar, Brady retired in 1994 after teaching at Knox for 32 years. Wilson taught literature and literary criticism at Knox from 1946 to 1980. Following his retirement, Wilson continued to tutor students in English as a volunteer. After Wilson's death in 1991, a student award in literary criticism was established in his memory.
About Knox College:
Knox College was chartered by the Illinois legislature on Feb. 15, 1837, and graduated its first class in 1846. Led by the Rev. George Washington Gale, the founders of came to Illinois from upstate New York in 1837, creating the College as well as the City of Galesburg, which received its municipal charter from the Illinois legislature on Feb. 14, 1857.
Knox's founders espoused strong abolitionist and egalitarian beliefs. During the 1850's, the first black U.S. Senator, Hiram Revels, attended Knox's preparatory academy. In 1860, Knox awarded its first honorary degree to Abraham Lincoln. In 1870 Knox was the first college in Illinois to award a degree to a black graduate, Barnabas Root. Also starting in 1870, men and women at Knox could enroll in the same courses, after a student strike ousted a president who tried to maintain separate classes.
Today, Knox is a nationally recognized, independent, four-year liberal arts college, with over 1,100 students from 40 states and 36 nations and 14,000 alumni worldwide. Knox's "Old Main," a National Historic Landmark, is the only building remaining from the 1858 Lincoln-Douglas debates.
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