By Tully Taylor
Christopher Metress, Samford University professor of English and director of Samford's University Fellows program, presented a paper on author Harper Lee at the Society for the Study of Southern Literature conference in Nashville, March 29- April 1.
Metress presented "Harper Lee and the Burden of Southern Liberalism," which addressed the new criticism facing Lee's novel To Kill a Mockingbird that it is not as racially progressive as first thought.
"In my paper, I offered a new reading which suggests that Harper Lee built this criticism of white liberalism and Atticus Finch into the novel itself, and that it's something we should have been noticing all along," Metress said.
Metress joined Samford in 1993.
Tully Taylor is a senior journalism and mass communication major and a news and feature writer in Samford University's office of marketing and communication.