The last lecture in the Alabama’s Lecture on Life’s Evolution Series, or ALLELE, will be held Thursday night in the Biology Building auditorium.

Joseph Carroll, professor of English at the University of Missouri-St. Louis and a leading scholar on the connection between social science and literary study, will visit The University of Alabama to give the lecture “The Historical Position of Literary Darwinism.”

Christopher Lynn, faculty advisor for the series, said Carroll’s lecture would end this year’s series as a prelude to the next.

“We chose Dr. Carroll because one of the goals of our ALLELE and Evolutionary Studies program are to demonstrate the broad applicability of evolutionary principles across the natural, social and applied sciences and humanities,” Lynn said.

In his lecture, Carroll will discuss literary Darwinism, which is a school of thought that integrates literary study with evolutionary social science. Carroll said aseries of scientific developments in the past two centuries, including Darwin’s theory of natural selection, have provided the foundation for literary Darwinism.

“Although there are now several scholars who would call what they do literary Darwinism, it is a recent and novel application of evolutionary theory,” Lynn said. “Dr. Carroll was among the first to apply Darwinian principles to literature & literary analysis and has literally written the book on the topic.”

The 2012-2013 ALLELE series is supported by UA’s College of Arts and Sciences; the Honors College; Blount Undergraduate Initiative; New College; educational studies in psychology, research methodology and counseling; and the departments of anthropology, biological sciences, chemistry, communicative disorders, English, gender and race studies, geological sciences, history, philosophy, psychology and telecommunications and film.

Kelsey Herndon, a graduate teaching assistant to Lynn, said ALLELE highlights the steps the University is taking to combat the stereotype of Alabamians as being completely clueless of evolutionary theory.

“The ALLELE lecture series serves to combat ignorance about evolution by bringing well-known scholars from many different disciplines to the University,” Herndon said.

The ALLELE lecture series is part of UA’s College of Arts and Sciences, the University’s largest division and the largest liberal arts college in the state. The lecture is free and open to the public.