Nov. 14 | Race Around The Quad: Race, Ethnicity, and Eugenics at John Steinbeck’s Stanford, 1919-1925

In person and online.  Open to the public. Registration required.

Thursday, November 14, 2024
4:30 - 6 p.m.
Green Library, Hohbach Hall, 1st Floor
*Access via East Wing entrance near Coupa Cafe

The Stanford University into which 17-year-old John Steinbeck matriculated in September 1919 was a deeply but somewhat idiosyncratically racist institution. Few African Americans were admitted, but most years the university’s founding president (one of the country’s leading eugenicists) posed with both the Chinese and the Japanese student clubs in “The Quad”. Jokes about eugenics professors, and racial and ethnic stereotypes, were common.

Stanford alumnus, and former Lane Center visiting scholar, Dr. Kevin Hearle will discuss his extensive research in the Stanford Archives on the eugenics content of Steinbeck’s courses, and the racism of student life at Stanford during Steinbeck’s student years.

**The talk will be preceded by a pop-up exhibit featuring a selection of items from Stanford Libraries’ Steinbeck Collections from 3:30-4:30 p.m in Hohbach Hall Room 123. The focus of this exhibit will be Steinbeck’s time at Stanford, including his work with the English club. Curated by Rebecca Wingfield, Curator for American and British Literature.

Kevin Hearle is an acclaimed poet and scholar of California literature. He is also a Stanford alumnus (Class of 1980, in English). He earned an MFA from the University of Iowa, and an MA and PhD in literature from the University of California at Santa Cruz. He has been an adjunct faculty member at a number of universities, including Iowa, UC Santa Cruz, San Jose State, Cal State L.A., and Santa Clara. He has been a founding member of three editorial boards, including—since 2004—of Steinbeck Review. Books he has edited or co-edited include the second Viking Critical Edition of The Grapes of Wrath, Beyond Boundaries: Rereading John Steinbeck, and The Essential Mary Austin. He received the Burkhardt Prize as the Outstanding Steinbeck Scholar of 2005, and from 2008 through 2013 he was a visiting scholar at Stanford. Dr. Hearle is currently Vice President of the International Steinbeck Society.

This program is co-sponsored by the Stanford Libraries.

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