The title of this lecture will be Holding on for Dear Life: The Value of Realism in Art. The son, grandson and great-grandson of newspaper editors, Dr. Crispin Sartwell is an American philosopher, educator and journalist who writes about myriad topics including politics, media, the arts, education and race. The former professor at Penn State University, University of Alabama and Maryland Institute College of Art is also the author and editor of a number of books, including The Art of Living: Aesthetics of the Ordinary in World Spiritual Traditions, Six Names of Beauty, Political Aesthetics and Obscenity, Anarchy, Reality. Sartwell got expelled from 10th grade for what he calls "fomenting revolution" and, after completing high school at the New Education Project, earned a bachelor's in English from University of Maryland, a master's in philosophy from Johns Hopkins University and a doctorate from University of Virginia. He has worked as a copy boy at the Washington Star, where he started writing about pop music, and as a free-lance rock critic for publications including Baltimore City Paper, High Fidelity and Melody Maker. Sartwell is a visiting associate professor of political science at Dickinson College, Carlisle, Pa., and the New York Times recently published his opinion piece titled "My Walden, My Walmart." His work has also appeared in Harper's, The Washington Post, and on Weekend All Things Considered.