Contact:  Rick Peterson, Manager of News Services, 414/832-6590
For Immediate Release					  December 30, 1996
 
The Art of Shopping Examined in Lawrence University Lecture
 
 
APPLETON, WIS. -- Shopping, that social phenomenon that pushes the public to
fever-pitched levels each holiday season, will be scrutized Friday, January 10
in a Lawrence University Main Hall Forum.  James Farrell, the O.C. and Patricia
Boldt Distinguished Teaching Professor of History at St. Olaf College,
presents, "Shopping: The Moral Ecology of Consumption," at 4:15 p.m. in
Lawrence's Main Hall, Room 109.  The lecture is free and open to the public.

Farrell will explore the idea of shopping, focusing on advertising , which
keeps consumers mentally shopping even when they are not physically shopping. 
He also will examine the institutions of shopping, particularly "the mall," and
will discuss shopping as a spiritual adventure, looking at the ways Americans
make sense of their materialism and their religion.

A member of the St. Olaf faculty since 1977, Farrell is the director of the
college's American Studies program.  His latest book, "The Spirit of the
Sixties: The Making of Postwar Radicalism," will be published in 1997.