The Department of World Languages, Literatures and Cultures; the Arkansas Humanities Center; Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies Program; and the Medieval and Renaissance Studies Program have partnered to present "Cervantes' Architectures: The Dangers Outside," a lecture by Frederick A. de Armas.

De Armas is a Robert O. Anderson Distinguished Service Professor in Humanities at the University of Chicago and is a literary scholar, critic and novelist. He has also served as the vice president and president of the Cervantes Society of America from 2003-2009. His research interests include early modern Spanish literature and culture, literature and the visual arts, and Italo-Hispanic artistic and literary relations.

De Armas's book, Cervantes' Architectures: The Dangers Outside, is the first book dedicated to architecture in Cervantes' prose fiction. At a time when a pandemic is sweeping the world, this book reflects on the danger outside by concentrating on the role of enclosed structures as places where humans may feel safe or as sites of beauty and harmony that provide solace. At the same time, a number of the architectures in Cervantes trigger dread and claustrophobia as they display a kind of shapelessness and a haunting aura that blends with the narrative.

The lecture begins at 5 p.m. today, Wednesday, Oct. 12, at the Giffels Auditorium, located in Old Main.

For more information, contact Manuel Olmedo Gobante at molmedog@uark.edu.