The English department’s Composition Conference for First-Year Student Writers and the 2008 Foust Lecture for the Humanities present Keith Gilyard, who will speak on the topic “Tragicomic Hope, African American Music, and Rhetorical Education” on Wednesday April 9 2008 at 7 PM in Boehm Auditorium.
Keith Gilyard, distinguished Professor of English at Pennsylvania State University, will speak at Kutztown University on Wednesday April 9 2008 at 7 PM in Boehm Auditorium.

A native of New York City who holds graduate degrees from Columbia University and New York University, Gilyard is Distinguished Professor of English at The Pennsylvania State University, University Park. He has served on the executive committees of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), the Conference on English Education (CEE), and the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC). In 2000, he served as chair of CCCC. Gilyard has lectured widely on language, literature, and education. He also has read his poetry at numerous venues and was a featured writer on the award-winning Annenberg/CPB television series The Expanding Canon.

Author of numerous publications, Gilyard’s books include Voices of the Self: A Study of Language Competence (1991), for which he received an American Book Award, Let’s Flip the Script, An African American Discourse on Language Literature, and Learning (1996), and Liberation Memories: The Rhetoric and Poetics of John Oliver Killens (2003).

Gilyard’s latest book, Composition and Cornel West: Notes toward a Deep Democracy, will be published April 2008.