Evocative and lasting, the image of haunting does not necessarily reflect only cartoon ghosts and stories from around the campfire. Some people desperately want to connect to a world of the spirit, to some confirmation of an afterlife, and at the same time relive history in contemporary events and policies. Can societies be haunted? Are there geographical spaces that gather the past to them? Can debt be a kind of haunting? Wayne State's Humanities Center will address these and other questions as it turns its attention to "hauntings" in its Faculty Fellowship Conference April 3.

The conference runs from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. in the McGregor Memorial Conference Center on the Wayne State campus. It will address issues relating to the concept of haunting as applied to literature, art, and society. Free and open to the public, attendees will learn about hauntings from a variety of academic perspectives through presentations on Shakespeare, the Cultural Revolution in China, civil rights murders and Hitchcock's Vertigo.

Participants can interact with both professors and community-based professionals in several academic fields including history, English, languages and literature.

The conference will feature keynote lectures from Jerry Christensen of University of California-Irvine and Kate Brogan of Wellesley College, both authorities in the field. Christensen will address the topic of Hitchcock's Vertigo, and Brogan will consider ghosts in literature as they serve in the reconceiving of ethnic identity. Seven Wayne State faculty members will present their perspectives on haunting through presentations on such topics as "Haunting in the War Film: Flags of our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima" and "Other Worlds: Return of the Dead and Other Mystical Experiences in Health-Related Contexts."

For more information, visit http://research2.wayne.edu/hum/conferences/index.html or contact Veronica Machak at (313) 577-4054.