Housekeeping: A Book of Ruth for 1950s America

This lecture on Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping was recorded in October 2020. The lecture was designed for students and faculty in the Freshman Studies program. This program, a multidisciplinary introduction to liberal learning, has been a cornerstone of the Lawrence curriculum since 1945. The lecturer, Catherine Gunther Kodat, is Provost and Dean of the Faculty and Professor of English. A scholar of 20th century U.S. literature and culture, she has written about the authors William Faulkner, Toni Morrison, Jean Toomer, and Zora Neale Hurston, and published a monograph on the political uses of culture during the Cold War. She began teaching Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping during the 1990s while an Assistant Professor of English at Hamilton College