Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis
Jon Eller and Ray Bradbury, 2008

2012 John D. Barlow Lecture in the Humanities

"Cry the Cosmos": Ray Bradbury and the American Imagination - Professor Jonathan R. Eller
Professor of English and Director of the Center for Ray Bradbury Studies, in the Institute for American Thought, a research component of Indiana University’s School of Liberal Arts (IUPUI).

For more than sixty years, Ray Bradbury has been one of the most recognized figures in American literature and popular culture. Between 1950 and 1962, he captured the American imagination with such enduring titles as The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, Fahrenheit 451, The October Country, Dandelion Wine, and Something Wicked This Way Comes. His increasing commitments to film, television, and stage adaptations of his work led inevitably to his decline as a storywriter, but his early tales and media work soon combined to make him the nation’s most prominent public advocate of the Space Age-a role he fulfilled for the rest of his long life.

Thursday, November 8, 2012, IUPUI Campus Center - Campus Map
5:00-6:00 pm Reception, Campus Center, First Floor, Atrium
6:15-7:30 pm Lecture, Campus Center, Lower Level, Theater

Free and open to the public, but seating is limited. RSVP and questions to .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) with "Bradbury" in the subject line.

Photo: Jon Eller (right) with Ray Bradbury.

More information about Professor Eller:

Jonathan R. Eller (B.S., United States Air Force Academy, 1973; B.A., University of Maryland, 1979; M.A. (1981), Ph.D. (1985), Indiana University) is Professor of English, Director of the Center for Ray Bradbury Studies, and Senior Textual Editor of the Institute for American Thought, a research component of Indiana University’s School of Liberal Arts (IUPUI). In addition to editing the Collected Stories of Ray Bradbury, Eller serves as Textual Editor of the Writings of Charles Peirce and the Works of George Santayana. He co-founded the Bradbury Center within the Institute for American Thought in 2007, and became the Center’s director in August 2011.

Eller retired from twenty years as an Air Force officer in 1993 to join the IUPUI faculty; his military service included operational assignments with the Tactical Air Command and the Pacific Air Forces before duty as an English professor at both the U. S. Air Force Academy (Colorado Springs) and the U. S. Naval Academy (Annapolis). He first met Ray Bradbury in 1989, eventually developing a working relationship that lasted until Mr. Bradbury’s death in June 2012. Since 2000 he has edited or co-edited several limited-press editions of Bradbury’s works, including The Halloween Tree (2005), Dandelion Wine (2007), and two collections of stories and precursors related to Bradbury’s publication of Fahrenheit 451: Match to Flame (2006) and A Pleasure to Burn (2010).

In 2004 Eller co-authored Ray Bradbury: The Life of Fiction. Eller’s most recent book, Becoming Ray Bradbury (2011), centers on Bradbury’s early life and development as a writer through the 1953 publication of Fahrenheit 451. He is presently writing a companion volume focusing on the middle decades of Bradbury’s career and his rise to cultural prominence. Professor Eller is also working on Simon & Schuster’s 60th anniversary edition of Fahrenheit 451, scheduled for publication in 2013.