Contemporary Literature Colloquium
Submit Events
The Contemporary Literature Colloquium welcomes suggestions for topics and speakers. If you are interested in organizing a colloquium roundtable, panel, discussion, or lecture, please contact Rebecca Walkowitz.
Workshops
Monthly dissertation workshops provide graduate students in the dissertation stage with an opportunity to present their written work for critically engaged peer review with graduate students and faculty working in contemporary literature. Participants are encouraged to attend regularly. If you are a dissertator who is interested in participating in or presenting a work-in-progress for the CLC Dissertator Workshop, please contact Taryn Okuma with a brief description of your work/project.
Thursday, September 15, 4 pm
Forum: "Writing in Public: The Profession of Literature." Roundtable discussion.
Readings. Room: 7191 Helen C. White
Thursday, September 22, 4pm
Movie Showing: A Face in the Crowd
Room: 7191 Helen C White
Wednesday, September 28, 6pm
Movie Showing: A Face in the Crowd
Room: 7191 Helen C White
Thursday, September 29, 12 pm
Roundtable with graduate students: "What the Novel Knows."
Joseph Litvak (Professor of English, Tufts University). Co-sponsored by the Anonymous Fund, the Americanist Literature and Culture Research Circle, the Middle Modernity Group, the Department of Theatre and Drama, and the Jewish Studies Program. Room: 7191 Helen C White. Moderator: Mary Mullen. Readings.
Thursday, September 29, 4 pm
Public Lecture: "Sycoanalysis: Schulberg, Kazan, and A Face in the Crowd"
Professor Joseph Litvak. Co-sponsored by the Anonymous Fund, the Americanist Literature and Culture Research Circle, the Middle Modernity Group, the Department of Theatre and Drama, the Visual Culture Cluster, and the Jewish Studies Program. Room: 6191 Helen C. White.
Thursday, October 20, 4 pm
Workshop: "Norman Mailer's II Principe."
John Tiedemann. Room: 7191 Helen C White
Thursday, November 10, 4 pm
"Just Witnessing" in Ondaatje's Anil's Ghost.
Kim Rostan. 7101 Helen C. White
**RESCHEDULED Thursday, November 17, 4 pm
Forum: "Writing in Public: Film."
Roundtable discussion. Readings and discussants TBA. Room: 7191 Helen C White.
Thursday, December 8, 12 pm
Roundtable with graduate students: "Feminist Theory in Public."
Professor Jane Gallop (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee). Co-sponsored by the Anonymous Fund and the Women's Studies Program. Moderator: Kim Rostan. Room: 7101 Helen C White.
Thursday, December 8, 4 pm
Public Lecture: "The Ethics of Close Reading."
Professor Jane Gallop. Co-sponsored by the Anonymous Fund and the Women's Studies Program. Room: 6191 Helen C White.
Thursday, December 15, 4 pm
Workshop: "Once Upon a Day: The Good War and Other Fairy Tales in Henry Green's Loving."
Taryn Okuma. 7101 Helen C. White
Thursday, January 26, 4 pm
Workshop: "'The Past is a Foreign Country': Buried Legacies of Empire in W.G. Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn"
Lucienne Loh. Room: 7101 HCW, 4PM
Thursday, February 16, 4 pm
Roundtable with graduate students: "Chinky English."
Evelyn Ch'ien (Assistant Professor of English, University of Minnesota). Co-sponsored by the Anonymous Fund and the Asian-American Studies Program. Organizer: Aarthi Vadde, Room 7101.
Thursday, February 16, 4 pm
Public Lecture: "Are There Rules in Global English?"
Professor Evelyn Ch'ien. Co-sponsored by the Anonymous Fund and the Asian-American Studies Program. Room 7191.
Thursday, March 9, 4 pm
Workshop: "Re-defining Authenticity: D.M. Thomas's The White Hotel and Holocaust Fiction"
Taryn Okuma, 4pm, 7101 HCW.
Thursday, March 30, 4 pm
Workshop: "Ishiguro's Modernity: Ataraxia and the Extirpation of Emotion"
Andrew Taggart. Room 7101.
Thursday, April 20th, 12 pm
Roundtable with graduate students: "Environmentalism and American Studies."
Ursula Heise (Associate Professor of English, Stanford University)Co-sponsored by the Americanist Literature and Culture Research Circle, Gaylord Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, and the Holstrom Environmental Endowment. Room TBA.
Thursday, April 20th, 4 pm
Public Lecture: "Extinctathon: Organic Form and the Poetics of Disappearance."
Professor Ursula Heise. Co-sponsored by the Gaylord Nelson Institute for Environmental Studiesand the Holstrom Environmental Endowment. Room TBA.
Saturday, April 29th
**In conjunction with Madlit the 2nd Annual Graduate Student Conference in Language and Literature.
Forum: What is Poetry's Public: Reading "For the Union Dead"
Description: Poetry is undergoing a critical renaissance in literary studies, as we can see in this year's MLA program. Now would be a good time to stage debates about the relationships among poetry, poetics, and various publics. We will use Robert Lowell's "For the Union Dead," a poem about a Civil War hero. We'll spend time talking about how the poem works before to talking more generally about poetry and publics. How does "For the Union Dead" think about poetry and publics? What kinds of social meaning does poetry make? What is the relationship between poetry and public monuments? Chair: Ray Hsu, 7191 Helen C White, 2:30 - 4:00pm.
Respondents: John Bradley, Carrie Conners, and Heather Dubrow
Thursday, May 4th, 4 pm
Workshop: "Joan Didion's The Last Thing He Wanted"
Clara Burke. Location: 7101 HCW