Geoffrey Harpham presented his lecture as part of the Townsend Center for the Humanities' Forum on the Humanities and the Public World. Harpham, President and Director of the National Humanities Center, is a historian of and an advocate for the humanities. His scholarship also focuses on the role of ethics in literary study, the work of Joseph Conrad, and the place of language in intellectual history. Dr. Harpham's publications include One of Us: The Mastery of Joseph Conrad; Shadows of Ethics: Criticism and the Just Society; and The Humanities and the Dream of America (forthcoming, 2011).