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Leyburn Library’s Author Talk Series Features Stephen Lind

Stephen J. Lind, assistant professor of business administration and communication, will talk about his new book “A Charlie Brown Religion: Exploring the Spiritual Life and Work of Charles M. Schulz” (2015) on Jan. 27 at 5 p.m. in the Book Nook in Washington and Lee University’s Leyburn Library.

The event is part of the University Library’s Author Talk Series and is free and open to the public. Refreshments will be provided.

“A Charlie Brown Religion” is an insightful study of all of the Peanuts comic strips, 75 animated titles and the merchandising empire as Schulz goes through what it means to believe, what it means to doubt and what it means to share faith with the world.

Lind has been part of the W&L faculty since 2013. He received his B.S. from Liberty University, his M.A. in speech communications from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and his Ph.D. in rhetorics, communications and information design from Clemson University.

This is Lind’s first book. He also is the author of an op-ed in the Dec. 20, 2015 issue of the Wall Street Journal, “You’re a Merry Man, Charlie Brown.”

He has written seven articles and chapters including “Studying Religion/Spirituality in a Mediated Religio-Secular Age of Publicity: The Need for Transdisciplinarity” in the Journal of Communication and Religion (2014); “Christmas in the 1960s: A Charlie Brown Christmas, Religion and the Conventions of the Television Genre” in the Journal of Religion and Popular Culture (2014); and “Un-defining Man: The Case for Symbolic Animal Communication” in E. Plec (Ed.), “Perspectives on Human-Animal Communication: Internatural Communication” (2012).

Lind has made media appearances including the BBC Radio 4, Family Life Radio and WSET, a CBS affiliate. He is a reviewer of three journals including the Journal of Religion and Popular Culture (2014–current) and the Religious Communication Association (2013-current.)

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