Happy Hour: Discovering Faulkner’s American South in 1990s Pakistan with Dr. Saima Sherazi

Sponsored by the ESU Central Pennsylvania Branch

The 1990s found agrarian societies in Pakistan undergoing profound transitions, not unlike the American South in the first part of the twentieth century. William Faulkner’s “The Sound and the Fury” captures the stark confrontation between waning Southern aristocracy (the Compson family) and the ascendant middle class represented by the Snopes family.

Dr. Saima Sherazi will take us through the experience of coping with societal change, especially when that change occurs in a setting with entrenched social hierarchies and gender roles. That setting could be rural Pakistan, or the American South of the 1920s. In either place there is upheaval – urbanization and industrialization collide with traditional dynamics of gender and class.  Dr. Sherazi will share her experience of teaching Faulkner in an all-girls college in a still conservative Pakistan – far removed from the American South, but nonetheless undergoing similar social upheavals. This ESU Happy Hour is sponsored by the ESU Central PA Branch. ESU Happy Hour programs are online, free, and open to all members and the public. Registration is required. All programs take place on Eastern Time.