On Monday, March 18, Assumption College, The Archaeological
Institute of America, and the Office of Academic Affairs present a lecture by
Dr. Amy Barron on “Agatha Christie, Archaeology, and Alzheimer’s.” The lecture
will be held in Kennedy Memorial Hall’s Alden Trust Auditorium (Room 112) and
begin at 7:00 pm.
Agatha Christie is known as one of the greatest mystery novelist
of the 20th century, but few people also know that she was married to renowned
Mesopotamian archaeologist Max Mallowan. Agatha spent much of her life
living and working on archaeological excavations and her love of the Middle
East and the life she and her husband lived there is reflected in many of her novels
including Murder on the Orient Express, Death on the Nile, and Murder in
Mesopotamia. She herself reflected on how similar the work of an
archaeologist and a detective were and was just as suited to unraveling
mysteries in the field as upon the page of her books.
This lecture will examine some of the archaeological sites that
Agatha and Max excavated, as well as how this work and the mystery novelist’s
life were revealed within the pages of her books. Furthermore, her
literary corpus is now being used to try to unravel the mysteries of the human
mind as a University of Toronto team examine the works for prolific writers for
signs of the onset of Alzheimer’s.
For
more information, please contact Jacqueline Chlapowski at jchlapowski@assumption.edu or at
508-767-7304.