Jim Lacey

James F. Lacey, Ph.D. (New York University)

Professor Emeritus of English and American Studies
Director Emeritus of the University Honors Program
Eastern Connecticut State University

Lacey@EasternCT.edu

Interests: Nineteenth-century American literature; American studies in Germany; messing about in small boats; the Bible as literature and biblical criticism; science fiction and detective fiction.

James F. Lacey, Ph.D. (Jim Lacey)

Jim Lacey is Professor Emeritus of American Studies and an author. His recent books include a mystery novel and a memoir.

Lacey was born in Brooklyn, New York, on October 15, 1933, and educated under the auspices of the Jesuits at Brooklyn Prep and St. Peter’s College, where he majored in English and philosophy and minored in mathematics.

After a year at the University of Bern with a Swiss Government Grant, Lacey became the first Teaching Assistant in the English department at Boston College. With an M.A. almost in hand, he did a stint as an artillery officer at Fort Benning, GA, returned to New York, and married historian and artist Barbara Ellson. He then joined the English department at St. Francis College, and began to take courses at NYU. After a year of research for his dissertation in Munich, Germany, with a DAAD fellowship, Lacey was granted the Ph.D. degree in American Civilization and offered a position at Eastern Connecticut State University. At Eastern he developed an American Studies program, chaired the English department, and directed the Honors Program. In 1999 he was named Distinguished Professor.

Lacey is an authority on Henry David Thoreau and the development of American studies at German universities. He published a science fiction novella in Galaxy magazine, many articles and reviews in scholarly journals, gave papers at professional conferences in the United States and Germany, and contributed substantially to The Readers' Encyclopedia of Shakespeare and The Readers' Encyclopedia of the Drama. As a small boat enthusiast, Lacey has written numerous articles and reviews for Messing About in Boats. Past President of the Northeastern Conference of the National Collegiate Honors Council, Lacey currently serves as editorial board member and contributor to Honors in Practice. He has recently published a novel, Double Trouble: A Ryan/Lehrer Mystery (2010), and a memoir, Serendipity: Impromptu Recollection (2010).

Blog <http://drjimlacey.blogspot.com>

Double Trouble: A Ryan/Lehrer Mystery

Plot summary The disappearance of a controversial history professor from his sailboat on the Connecticut shore initiates a web of intrigue that brings an attractive cast of characters to New York City and Washington, D.C. They include savvy and hapless academics, a popular administrator who is not what he claims to be, a smart and sexy law student, a middle school teacher with a shadowy past, and two precocious kids. What begins as a halfhearted exploration of a local mystery at a small state college in New England by amateur sleuths Jim Ryan and Rob Lehrer leads to the discovery of the Knights of Malta’s involvement in violence and the shenanigans of the state department in Latin America during the Reagan administration.

Paperback <https://www.createspace.com/3450181> E-Book <http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/19005>

Serendipity: Impromptu Recollections

This light-hearted memoir recounts growing up in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, in the mid twentieth century. It includes street games, grammar school with the Sisters of Charity, as well as high school and college experiences at Jesuit institutions. It focuses on early jobs, a year at a Swiss university, comic episodes with the military, research in Germany, the Ph.D. ogre, and exploits while teaching at colleges in Brooklyn and Connecticut. Though raised as a Roman Catholic, Lacey is a secular humanist.

Paperback <https://www.createspace.com/3479417> E-Book: <http://www.smashworks.com/books/view/26912>