When:
Thursday, May 11, 2017
2:30 PM - 4:00 PM CT
Where: Kresge Hall, 5-531, 1880 Campus Drive , Evanston, IL 60208 map it
Contact:
Sarah Peters
(847) 491-3864
Group: Critical Theory
Co-Sponsor:
Comparative Literary Studies
Category: Academic
The Critical Theory Program Presents a graduate workshop on Emily Dickinson and birds by Branka Arsic, Columbia University
Birds and insects are material for Emily Dickinson's poetry; they are found in it from the early fascicle poems to late envelope fragments. They do various things: they fly, of course, but they are also creatures of stillness, return or delay. They raise ontological questions (what life is, or what loss is) while also pointing to aesthetic questions (form and rhythm, for example). There are instances where they shape-shift and transform themselves, and there are instances where their morphology prevents the dissolution of larger embodied phenomena such as landscape or trees. But in all cases they are creatures of memory, embodied if flying archives. It is to those questions - of being, loss, recollecting and archiving - that this seminar will attend.
Participants are asked to read a few of Dickinson's poems, from the Franklin Variorum Edition, in advance of the workshop. Email Miriam Piilonen, miriampiilonen2018@u.northwestern.edu, for copies of the poems.
Co-sponsored by the Buffett Institute, Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities, Center for Global Culture and Communication, English Department, Religious Studies Department, Philosophy Department, and Comparative Literary Studies Program.
When:
Friday, May 12, 2017
4:00 PM - 6:00 PM CT
Where: Patrick G. and Shirley W. Ryan Center for the Musical Arts, Regenstein MCR (RCMA), 70 Arts Circle, Evanston, IL 60208 map it
Contact:
Sarah Peters
(847) 491-3864
Group: Critical Theory
Co-Sponsor:
Comparative Literary Studies
Category: Academic
The Critical Theory Program Presents:
Lecture and graduate student workshop with visiting scholar Branka Arsic
"Entomological Persons: Insects and Ahab"
Abstract:
Reconstructing Melville’s interest in the entomology of his time, and paying special attention to his comments concerning experimentation on worms and polyps, my talk investigates lessons he learns about continuity, integrity and complex forms of life. I will be especially interested in investigating how the entological claims that life continues sensing even when its discreet formations are violated applies to instances of human life that he describes in Mardi and Moby-Dick. In both novels the disintegration of figured bodies entails a complex discussion of the gatheredness of persons to whom they belong; strangely, that means that in most cases the cohesion of bodies – or any representable figuration – is not a condition of a person’s existence. My paper will thus be concerned with the status of such claims in Melville. What can it possibly mean to say that human personhood multiplies, disseminates and disperses? What can it mean to propose in all earnest that parts of a disintegrated body – amputated limbs – go on living a personalized life of their own? Strange as those questions are they allow us to glimpse decisive aspects of Melville’s ethics.
Co-sponsored by the Buffett Institute, Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities, Center for Global Culture and Communication, English Department, Religious Studies Department, Philosophy Department, and Comparative Literary Studies Program.