January 26, 2009

Religion expert will talk about Virginia Woolf, Edith Stein

Astell's talk, which is free and open to the public, is 4:30 p.m. in the Krannert Auditorium. The talk is sponsored by the College of Liberal Arts' Religious Studies program and the Aquinas Educational Foundation.

Astell specializes in medieval literature and spirituality and contemporary lay spirituality. She is the author of "Eating Beauty: The Eucharist and the Spiritual Arts of the Middle Ages," "Joan of Arc and Sacrificial Authorship," "Political Allegory in Late Medieval England," "Chaucer and the Universe of Learning," "Job, Boethius, and Epic Truth" and "Song of Songs in the Middle Ages."

She is a member of the Schoenstatt Community,  and a board member of the Society for the Study of Christian Spirituality and of the Colloquium on Violence and Religion. Astell also taught at Purdue from 1988 to 2007. In 2003, she was enrolled in Purdue's Book of Great Teachers.

Writer: Amy Patterson Neubert, (765) 494-9723, apatterson@purdue.edu

Sources: Jennifer Bay, assistant professor of English, (765) 494-8122, jbay@purdue.edu

Janice Lauer Hutton, professor emerita of English and president of the Aquinas Educational Foundation Board, (765) jmlauer@purdue.edu

Purdue News Service: (765) 494-2096; purduenews@purdue.edu

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