Award-winning author to lecture as second installment of lecture series
Maybe you’ve seen the movie, or even read the book, but the woman behind ‘A Beautiful Mind’ will be making her own mark on the minds of students at Syracuse University.
As part of the university’s Journeys symposiums, Sylvia Nasar, author of ‘A Beautiful Mind,’ will speak at 4:30 p.m. today in Maxwell Auditorium. The Syracuse Symposium is an annual festival that includes lectures, performances, exhibits and other events to promote university-wide intellectual thinking.
Nasar is currently a John S. and James L. Knight Professor of Journalism at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. She has contributed to Fortune Magazine, U.S. News & World Report and The New York Times.
The symposium is the brainchild of Samuel Gorovitz, a philosophy professor who currently uses Nasar’s book in his honors seminar class.
‘[The symposium] is a wonderful opportunity to hear and be in conversation with one of the leading writers,’ Gorovitz said.
The students in Gorovitz’s seminar class have responded to ‘A Beautiful Mind’ with vigor and enthusiasm, he said.
The book is the biography of Nobel Laureate John Nash, a mathematician who suffered from schizophrenia for three decades. Nasar’s book won the National Book Critics Circle Award for biography and also became a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize.
The Nash biography inspired filmmakers to produce the Academy Award-winning film that received such accolades as Best Picture and Best Director.
Eric Holzwarth, assistant dean of The College of Arts and Sciences, said Nasar’s symposium is a chance for students to interact with the writers of the books students read in their classes.
‘We are bringing people to campus who we read about in classes,’ Holzwarth said. ‘We’re delighted to have Sylvia Nasar join us. She has a reputation to be a terrific speaker.’
Holzwarth said part of the goal of the symposiums is to show students that knowledge is not compartmentalized, but actually allows students to learn different viewpoints. All students and Syracuse residents are invited to participate in the symposium free of charge and Holzwarth hopes many students take advantage of the opportunity to expand their intellectual horizons.
Some students are eager for this opportunity.
Brendan O’Neill, a freshman in The College of Arts and Sciences, has been anticipating Nasar’s presentation.
‘I’m excited to go to the symposium because I really like the movie ‘A Beautiful Mind,’ and I am interested to hear Sylvia Nasar’s take on the differences between the book and the movie,’ O’Neill said.
