Nobel laureate to speak at Arts and Letters event

In her search for a signature event for the College of Arts and Letters’ Year of Arts and Culture, Dean Karin Wurst said Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk captivates the college’s ideals.

“He really exemplifies our focus on arts and humanities in a global context,” Wurst said.

Pamuk, winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature, will speak at the event at 7:30 p.m. on Monday at the Wharton Center Pasant Theatre.

Tickets to the event cost $20 for the public and are free to MSU faculty, staff and students who show an ID at the box office.

English professor Patrick O’Donnell said there will be a question-and-answer period for students and faculty and a private lunch in addition to the two speaking engagements happening throughout the day.

“Students can really have a chance to talk to him beyond the usual lecture format,” O’Donnell said.

Pamuk is a visiting professor of Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures at Columbia University this year. Officials from Columbia said he could not be reached and his contact information was private.

Pamuk earned the Nobel Prize for his books, such as “The White Castle,” “The Black Book,” “The New Life,” “My Name is Red,” “Snow” and “Istanbul: Memories and the City.” He also has received international awards for his work that has been translated into dozens of languages and is a honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, according to an MSU press release.

“I think he’s one of those authors who really goes beyond the cliché of the cultural clash and looks at the interracing of culture as positive relationships between different cultures, not just the simplified model of a clash and a nation that’s bandied about in the press,” Wurst said.

Piril Atabay, a history doctoral student, is from Turkey and will be leading Pamuk around campus. Pamuk’s work, Atabay said, fits very closely with her dissertation comparing Chicago and Istanbul.

“He addresses his audiences universally,” she said.

O’Donnell said he and Wurst have been teaching a course on Nobel Prize-winning authors, which includes Pamuk’s work. O’Donnell will mediate the question-and-answer session Monday.

“I think a lot of things, growing up (in Istanbul), will be things that students can relate to,” he said. “He has a very broad international sense of things and that’s something that will be of great interest to a lot of people.”