Gerald Early Education OPENING-DAY TALK: THE SQUARED CIRCLE: BOXING IN CONTEMPORARY ART GERALD EARLY AMERICAN PRIZEFIGHTING: THE RISE AND FALL OF THE LONESOME ART OF MANHOOD SATURDAY, JULY 12, 2003, 2 PM $8 ($6 WALKER MEMBERS) AUDITORIUM Prizefighting is seen as a true test of skill, courage, intelligence, and manhood. Throughout the history of the sport, boxers have inspired both pride and revulsion: Muhammad Ali is regarded as a hero, Mike Tyson a thug. Gerald Early discusses America's ambivalent embrace of boxing and its technicians. He is the editor of several volumes, including The Sammy Davis, Jr., Reader (2001); The Muhammad Ali Reader (1998); Body Language: Writers on Sport (1998); and Lure and Loathing: Essays on Race, Identity, and the Ambivalence of Assimilation (1993). He is the author of The Culture of Bruising: Essays on Prizefighting, Literature, and Modern American Culture, which won the 1994 National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism. Other works include One Nation Under a Groove: Motown and American Culture (1994); and Daughters: On Family and Fatherhood (1994). Early is the Merle Kling Professor of Modern Letters, professor of English and of African and Afro-American studies, and director of the International Writers Center at Washington University in St. Louis. Go here for details about the exhibition. Cosponsored by Graywolf Press.