TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – University Libraries invites the public to a book talk and reading by Dr. William Doty, professor emeritus of religion at The University of Alabama, at 4 p.m. Nov. 11 on the second floor of Gorgas Library. He is the author of recently published books, “Jacking in to the Matrix Franchise” and “Myth: A Handbook.”

Retired in 2001, Doty is a prolific writer, translator and editor who has published 14 books and more than 70 essays in a wide range of journals, including religious studies, anthropology, psychology, classics and art criticism.

He has received grants and fellowships from the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, B’nai Brith, the Ford Foundation and the Society for Values in Higher Education.

A frequent lecturer and consultant on college campuses, Doty has edited, with Julie Thompson Klein, two studies of interdisciplinary education, “Interdisciplinary Resources,” and “Interdisciplinary Studies Today,” with Robert Detweiler, a volume of essays on a short story by Margaret Atwood, entitled “The Daemonic Imagination: Biblical Text and Secular Story.”

With Wendell Beane he edited the two-volume “Myths, Rites, Symbols: A Mircea Eliade Reader” and with William Hynes, he edited and contributed to “The Mythical Trickster Figure: Contours, Contexts, and Criticisms.” The book “Myths of Masculinity” published in 1993, and his “Mythography: The Study of Myths and Rituals” first appeared in 1986, with the second and revised edition appearing in 1997.