Dr. Philip Acree Cavalier, Dean of General Education and Associate Professor of English at Catawba College, recently presented a paper at a two day international conference on 'The Idea of the City: Early Modern, Modern, and Post Modern Locations and Communities" at the University of Northampton, England. Dr. Acree Cavalier's explored the ways in which late 19th-century authors such as William Dean Howells and Henry James understand and describe the process of acquiring knowledge in and about increasingly modern and complex American cities such as New York and Boston.