Karla FC Holloway, professor of English, Law, and Women’s Studies as Duke University, will be the keynote speaker at McDaniel College’s Holloway Lecture, “BookMarks: Reading Race, Reading Sports, and Other Public Preoccupations,” at 8 p.m. Nov. 1 in McDaniel Lounge. The annual lecture is sponsored by the department of English.

The lecture is free and open to the public. For more information, call (410) 857-2294.

Based on her newly released “BookMarks: Reading in Black and White – A Memoir,” Holloway will consider the public side of reading and how African-American leaders define themselves by the books they read. She will also discuss the recent preoccupations with sports matters at Duke University and consider how we read conduct and the public cultures of sport.

Holloway, the William Rand Kenan Professor of English at Duke University, also holds appointments in the Law School and in the Department of Women’s Studies. She researches cultural studies with a focus on ethics, theory, race, gender and law, and teaches courses in African-American cultural studies, ethics and law, American literatures, bioethics, narrative and literature.

Holloway is the author of six books, “Passed On: African-American Mourning Stories,” “BookMarks: Reading in Black and White – A Memoir,” “Codes of Conduct: Race, Ethics, and the Color of Our Character,” “Moorings and Metaphors,” “The Character of the Word: The Texts of Zora Neale Hurston,” and “New Dimensions of Spirituality.”

Holloway earned her A.B. from Talladega College, her M.A. and Ph.D. in English and Linguistics from Michigan State University, and a Master of Legal Studies from Duke University School of Law. At Duke since 1992, she has earned numerous awards and served as Director of the African and African-American Studies Program and Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences. Hollway is a board member on Princeton University’s Council on Women and Gender, the Greenwall Foundation’s Advisory Board in Bioethics, and Duke University Center for Documentary Studies.

The Holloway Lecture is named for Fred Garrigus Holloway, the fourth president of McDaniel College. A graduate of the class of 1919, Holloway went on to earn a divinity degree from Drew University and was ordained by the Methodist Protestant church in 1921. He served charges in Delaware, Virginia and Maryland before he was called to Westminster Theological Seminary in 1927 as Professor of Biblical Languages. There, his emergence as one of the church's most powerful preachers and as a promising young administrator led to the presidency of the Seminary, and, after a short time, to the presidency of the College itself.

In a critical period of growth and change, his insistence on academic excellence and collegiality made a deep and lasting impression on the institution, and his brilliant sermons and poetry readings enlivened a difficult decade. Because literature was an integral part of his intellectual curriculum, the College elected to present annual scholarly lectures as a lasting tribute to one of Fred Holloway's deepest commitments.