Houston A. Baker, Jr., the Susan Fox Beischer and George D. Beischer Arts and Sciences Professor of English and Professor of African American Studies at Duke University, will lecture at DePaul University at 6 p.m. Oct. 27 in the Student Center, 2250 N. Sheffield Ave., Room 120. Baker’s lecture, titled “Traveling with Faulkner,” will provide personal reflections on the meaning of the work of novelist William Faulkner for the new academic discipline of southern studies.

His talk will draw on themes from his latest book, “Turning South Again: Re-thinking Modernism.” Baker, former president of the Modern Language Association, has authored several acclaimed books that focus on themes, such as modernism and the Harlem Renaissance, rap music and the academy, the blues, ideology and literary theory, and post-structural theory as applied to African-American literature. The event is the first in the “Engaged Humanities Speaker Series” sponsored by DePaul’s Humanities Center. The lecture is free and open to the public. For more information about upcoming lectures, contact the humanities center at 773/325-4580 or visit the Web site at: www.depaul.edu/~humctr .