Books-into-Film Event at Washington College To Screen and Discuss "The Color Purple"

CHESTERTOWN—Miller Library at Washington College will host a Books-To-Film event Wednesday October 27th at 6 p.m. in the Sophie Kerr Room of the library. The subject of the free movie screening and literary discussion will be The Color Purple, Alice Walker’s novel about the life of black women in rural Georgia in the 1930s, and the 1985 film adaptation directed by Steven Spielberg. Alisha Knight, an associate professor of English at the College, will lead the screening and discussion.

The event is part of a statewide project sponsored by five college libraries and the Maryland Humanities Council through support from the National Endowment for the Humanities. On its website, the Humanities Council describes the “Books into Film” program as an effort to “sustain the value of literature and the written word in handling complex themes and promoting deep thinking, while celebrating the immediacy of film in contemporary culture and its ability to engage audiences with powerful images. … The screening and ensuing discussion will uncover critical insight into literary and film devices such as story line (plot), characterization, and setting, as well as how mood, tone, and other subtleties of language are reinterpreted through images, music, and sounds.”

Faculty, staff, and students of Washington College as well as members of the community are invited to attend the Oct. 27 event. To encourage participation, The Friends of Miller Library has purchased 25 copies of the book to be given to the first 25 persons who register for the event.

Other Maryland colleges hosting screenings and faculty-led discussions of other novels and their screen adaptations this fall include Stevenson, Hood, Goucher, Notre Dame and Loyola. The series will continue in the spring at dates to be announced. For the spring event, Washington College has selected Raymond Carver’s collection of short stories “Short Cuts,” and the 1993 Robert Altman film adaptation by the same name. That screening and discussion will be led by Dr. Christopher Ames, Provost and Dean of the College, at a date still to be determined.

To sign up for the Color Purple event, please contact Ruth Shoge at rshoge2@washcoll.edu or 410-778-7292. For more information go to: http://millerlibrary.washcoll.edu or http://booksintofilm.lndlibrary.org.

Photos: A recent paperback edition of the Pulitzer-Prize winning novel. Washington College English professor Alisha Knight will lead the post-screening discussion.