Symposia/Conferences
Past Events
2021 - 2022
Beginning with Melville's remarks left in his Encantadas concerning the Galapagos tortoises this lecture examines the scientific and historical archives to which he had recourse, from Cuvier and Broderip to Porter and Delano.
2020-2021
Save the Date! Join Us for Class Day on May 14th 2021 at 4:00pm EST. More Information to Follow.
English Concentrators and Faculty,
Please join us for the 2021 Majors' Colloquium. Our majors have chosen the topic:
Your Faves are Problematic: Reading and Teaching Fraught Texts
And we are thrilled to introduce our department's speakers on this topic:
- Anne A. Cheng
- Jeff Nunokawa
- Kinohi Nishikawa
- Autumn Womack
As we must, we will be meeting virtually via Zoom.
Wednesday, April 21, 2021 at 4:30 p.m. EST.
The Next Chapter: Alumni Conversations in the Department of English. Please join us on March 3, 2021 at 4:30 p.m. via Zoom to meet the panel of Princeton University English Department alumni:
Eu Na Noh '16 (Law)
L. Driskell-Garcia '17 (Education)
Emily Silk '10 (Publishing)
Jack Lohmann '19 (Journalism)
Veronica Pickett '10 (TV/ Media)
Claire Greene '13 (Medicine)
Gunnar Rice '17 (Graduate School)
Bhaamati Borkheteria '20 (Tech)
Friday, February 19
1:30 – 3:00, Panel 1: Capital Accounts
On the Threshold of Friendship: Socialist Sympathy at the Fin de Siècle
Gemma Holgate (Royal Holloway, University of London)
The Social Division of Intellectual Labor as a Condition of England in Kingsley's Alton Locke
Marie Sanazaro (Princeton University)
Gothic Marxism: Theorizing an Economy to the Dead
Anthony Gomez (Stony Brook University)
Response
Lacey Muckle (Rutgers University)
3:00 – 3:30, Break
We invite you to celebrate the end of the semester with us on Wednesday, December 9th at 6:00 PM (EST) with an online screening of Metropolitan (1990) followed by a casual discussion on Zoom. All English department faculty, staff, and graduate students are invited to attend. While we cannot provide refreshments, we encourage you to bring your own popcorn & cold or hot beverage. We will send out a reminder with a Zoom link in the next week or so.
We hope to see you there!
Join us on Friday, November 20th at 4:30 PM as Organizing Stories presents a Student-Faculty Activist Workshop with S.O.N.G.
The Trans Studies Symposium will bring together artists, scholars, and community organizers to be in dialogue about the current state of trans studies and movement building. Over four conversations, the symposium will help to unfurl the legacies of trans organizing, scholarship, art practices, and histories, and how we might consider this history as we move forward into a precarious future.
Register here: https://forms.gle/QakCvogVKXbJSi8x9
The Trans Studies Symposium will bring together artists, scholars, and community organizers to be in dialogue about the current state of trans studies and movement building. Over four conversations, the symposium will help to unfurl the legacies of trans organizing, scholarship, art practices, and histories, and how we might consider this history as we move forward into a precarious future.
Register here: https://forms.gle/fyKxFF6Jh7D6d2jHA
The Trans Studies Symposium will bring together artists, scholars, and community organizers to be in dialogue about the current state of trans studies and movement building. Over four conversations, the symposium will help to unfurl the legacies of trans organizing, scholarship, art practices, and histories, and how we might consider this history as we move forward into a precarious future.
The Trans Studies Symposium will bring together artists, scholars, and community organizers to be in dialogue about the current state of trans studies and movement building. Over four conversations, the symposium will help to unfurl the legacies of trans organizing, scholarship, art practices, and histories, and how we might consider this history as we move forward into a precarious future.
Organizing Stories is an initiative co-founded and co-directed by Professors Autumn Womack and Monica Huerta which seeks to connect students with veteran organizers in order to investigate the long histories of anti-racist activism, racial justice organizing, and coalition-building as they relate to questions of narrative, storytelling, and humanistic study more broadly.
Organizing Stories is excited to host Reverend Dr. Liz Theoharis for our first workshop event on Wednesday, October 21st at 4:30 PM.
Mellon Forum on the Urban Environment - Home
Mellon Forum on the Urban Environment - Citizenship
Mellon Forum on the Urban Environment - Disability
Conference details, including speakers and schedules, can be seen at https://netherlands.princeton.edu/ and there will be regular updates (with paper abstracts, bios. and an RSVP form). This is an unusually large gathering of cross-disciplinary experts from the Netherlands and Europe outside of a major international convention, and we hope that it will be attractive to those interested in the New York and mid-Atlantic regions as well as more locally in Princeton.
Thinking of doing future research or currently working on a thesis dealing with Latino/a/x topics but weren’t sure where to begin? Are you curious about how others have studied Latinos/as/x in their research? Join the conversation at this casual lunch with Princeton LAO faculty on how to identify the best strategies and resources for your Latino/a/x studies project.
How does Latina/o/x Studies exert pressure on the memory-work of U.S. American cultural history, and especially on its figurations of racial identity? Reaching back to the early eighteenth century, this talk situates third-generation Puritan Cotton Mather within Spanish colonial and indigenous spaces and translation practices. A theorization of errancy links this revisionism to the contemporary activist poetics of Juan Felipe Herrera.
Kindly RSVP
A conversation on hemispheric archives -- for faculty and graduate students across the humanities
MASTER CLASS - Aristotle's Poetics with Andrew Ford (Classics) - November 15, 2019 10am -12:30pm
PUBLIC KEYNOTE - "Adorno and the Vicissitudes of Sublimation" Martin Jay (Professor Emeritus, University of California, Berkeley) with Anson Rabinbach (History) as conversant - November 15, 2019 5pm – 6:30pm (Reception to follow)
Website: Commons.princeton.edu/PoeticsOfMaterialLife
THE SYMPOSIUM
Abstract
Critics of postsecularism have unsettled the idea that the United States is progressively secularizing, leading to scholarship that explores the complex entanglement of religion and politics in America. This paper furthers this project by examining one of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s later novels, Poganuc People (1870), for its articulation of an enduring cultural narrative about evangelical religion supplanting rancorous party politics by occupying its place and assuming its democratic character.
Emily Jacir will reflect on her work Where we come from which Edward Said wrote about in his last published piece before his death. She will address questions of community, activism, being an Arab and secularism in relation to Edward Said as well as share personal observations.
Intersections Book Club welcomes Carissa Harris, Associate Professor of English at Temple University and author of Obscene Pedagogies: Transgressive Talk and Sexual Education in Late Medieval Britain (Cornell, 2018). Lunch will be provided.
An interdisciplinary conference on the intersections of literature and the graphic arts in the long 19th century, to be held at Princeton on October 4-5, 2019. The conference will address new work by art historians and literary critics in this field, a rich and growing area for recent interdisciplinary scholarship. It will be open to the public and will be accompanied by an exhibit at the Princeton Art Museum.
This talk explores the possibility of inventing a new methodology or locating alternative methodologies less reliant upon the disciplines used to generate knowledge about sexuality. It examines the importance of the sexual imaginary’s embodied movement in order to remind us that black imagination and creative desires have always shaped and will continue to inform their radical black politics.
Intersections Working Group (co-sponsored by English and African American Studies)
Scholarly Panels and luncheon
For more details and a full schedule, please visit:http://www.princeton.edu/prcw/schedule/
2019-2020
Public Lecture
Free and open to the public
Reception to follow
This event has been canceled.
The Whitney J Oates Fellow in the Humanities and Department of English Graduate Workshop with Kirsten Silva Gruesz.
Two Wordsworths: Mountain-Climbing, Letter-Writing
Corals are everywhere in Melville’s work. His obsession with them started with Typee and Omoo, where corals were the phenomenon of a predominantly geological nature; then it intensified in Mardi and Moby-Dick, where they were promoted into a primary metaphysical concept. As of Mardi, corals provide the starting point for how Melville understands the functioning of individuation, generating an ontology attentive to embodiment, and finally leading him to posit the existence of the utterly incarnated, porous, and affective minds that I call “coral”
Richard Preston is the bestselling author of ten books, including The Hot Zone, The Wild Trees, and his most recent, Crisis in the Red Zone. His books explore little-known worlds of nature, terror, and human character, and have been published in more than 35 languages. Preston has taught nonfiction writing at Princeton University and the University of Iowa, and he is the recipient of many honors, including the Champion of Prevention Award of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.
Wednesday November 20:
12pm: “Writing Imperial and Indigenous Histories” - Hinds Library an open seminar for graduate students. Professor Kate Fullagar, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. (sponsored by the Committee on Renaissance and Early Modern Studies)
Thursday November 21:
12pm: “Three Lives in an Age of Empire,” Kate Fullagar - McCormick Hall 101.
Roundtable Discussions to follow Prof. Fullagar’s Lecture. - McCosh 2
Faculty Seminar for Meredith Martin in the Hinds - Lunch will be provided
2018-2019
The Black Poetry Conference features more than 40 poets in a series of panels and readings, organized by Tracy K. Smith, Joshua Kotin, and Jaamil Olawale Kosoko.
Please see the Conference website for full details.
A collaboration between the Department of Comparative Literature and the School of Architecture.
2017-2018
Panel I: 2:00 - 3:15
3:15 - 3:45 - coffee break
Panel II: 3:45 - 5:00
5:00 - 6:00 - reception
Techne, Technique, Technology
Professor Malabou extends the claims both of her Gauss lecture and her recent book, "Befor Tomorrow, Epigenesis and Rationality (2016, Paris 2014)." To reserve a seat, please email both Andrew Cole (acole@princeton.edu) and Barbara Leavey (blleavey@princeton.edu). Admission will be on a rolling basis, with seats saved for members of the Princeton University community before opening up to members of the public. The location of the seminar will be communicated to all registrants the week beforehand.
How do scholars write criticism about the moment they're living in? Join the students of English and African American Studies 574, “The Present Moment” (Fall 2017), for a discussion of the contemporary as both object of study and method of analysis. Speakers will address objects that undertake their own projects of social, political, and aesthetic critique, and will draw on critical and theoretical writing from authors both in and outside of the academy. The conference is free and open to the public; all are welcome to attend.
State of the Field: Victorian Studies
G. W. F. Hegel is arguably the most important thinker of modernity whose legacy reaches to nearly all branches of humanist inquiry. He also remains a source of debate and controversy. This seminar explores Hegel’s thought in the humanities today in a multi-disciplinary frame: literature, philosophy, religion, political science, math, and intellectual history. Speakers will offer brief provocations for discussion, addressing Hegel’s place in the university in the present and future.
Frances Ferguson, "Rape and the Rise of the Novel" (Representations, 1987).
Program Schedule:
9:30-10:30, Approaching the Argument
10:45-12:00, Feminism, Theory, Philosophy
12:00-1:30, Break
1:30-2:45, Genre, Personhood, Form
2:45-3:15, Break
3:15-4:30, Rape Culture and the 18th-Century Studies
4:45, Closing Reflections
2016-2017
Migrants and Truth Production, 1400-1700
A daylong conference on the significance of migration to the literary, cultural, and intellectual history of the early modern period, featuring a keynote from Christopher Wood, Professor of German at New York University.
Lunch will be provided.
Co-sponsored by the Department of Comparative Literature, Department of English, Department of French and Italian, Department of History, Princeton University Graduate School, Program in American Studies
Reception at Prospect House to follow event.
Space for this event is limited. If you are interested in attending, please RSVP here: https://goo.gl/forms/qleXbHrrwnQvAS3p1
"Scholarly Publishing Workshop: What, Where, When, and How"
Co- sponsored by the Department of Comparative Literature, Department of English, English Department Graduate Action Committee, Program in American Studies
Lunch will be provided.
Sponsored by the 18th C./Romantic Studies Colloquium, Americanist Colloquium, Council of the Humanities, Department of Comparative Literature, Department of English, English Graduate Action Committee, Program in American Studies
Co-sponsored by the Center for the Study of Religion, Humanities Council and the Department of English.
Hosted by the Northeast Milton Seminar
Co-sponsored by the Center for the Study of Religion, Humanities Council and Department of English
Alternatives to Academia: Panel Discussion
Reception at the Prospect House to follow event.
2015-2016
In recent years, theoretical developments across several disciplines (history, art history, literary studies) have highlighted the intrinsic dependence of the political in general, and early modern European politics in particular, on the suggestive powers of images and fictions.
http://english.fas.nyu.edu/object/PhillipHarper.html
Reservations required. Contact tarab@princeton.edu to reserve your space.
Free and open to the public, but registration required. For additional information and to register:
http://www.princeton.edu/ams/program-events
Conference organizer: Anne A. Cheng
Sponsored by the Program in American Studies; Co-sponsored by the Department of English, Princeton Environmental Institute, Council for the Humanities, Department of African American Studies, and the Department of Anthropology
Coventry Patmore and the Feeling of Forms
Co-sponsored by the Princeton Department of English Victorian Colloquium and the Center for Digital Humanities.
http://fis.princeton.edu
Free and open to the public
Supported by The Lewis Center for the Arts, David A. Gardner Magic Fund, Global Shakespeare, Department of English, Princeton Fund for Irish Studies
Join us for the start of The Contemporary, a three-day conference sponsored by the Dean for Research Innovation Fund for New Ideas in the Humanities; Department of English; Center for Digital Humanities; Program in American Studies; Program in Media + Modernity
The keynote lecture with Johanna Drucker is open to the public. No registration is required, however registration is required for The Contemporary Conference, March 4-5, 2016.
https://contemporary.princeton.edu/
Hosted by Princeton University's Department of English
Modern Language Association Annual Conference, Austin TX
http://www.mla.org/convention
For further information visit: www.princeton.edu/piirs/conflictshorelines
"Believing What We Read" is a mini-symposium about belief in literature and culture, focusing on the question of how literary belief both resembles and radically departs from other forms of conviction. Two leading scholars of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century literature, Deidre Lynch (Harvard) and Elaine Auyoung (Minnesota), will join Sophie Gee (Princeton) in presenting papers on the problem of Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment faith and cultural value.
SYMPOSIUM
What stories about power, difference, and belonging fuel the social crises we face today? How does visionary fiction offer us models for creating new possible worlds? Can the combined insights and interventions of artists, activists, and scholars plot a different course forward? “Ferguson is the Future” is part of an ongoing collaboration to imagine and create alternative worlds that are more just and representative of humanity.
2014-2015
A Princeton Conference on Early Modern Law, Politics, and Literature
Registration is required.
EventBrite Registration Link (Deadline: Monday, April 13th, 2015):
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-english-legal-imaginary-1500-1700-ticke...
"Emerson's Humiliation: On Shame, Respect, and Reform"
Contact Melissa Tuckman (mtuckman@princeton.edu) for a pre-circulate portion of the paper.
"Wordsworth's Ruins"
Reception in the Thorp Library to follow talk.
"Tense Future: From Aeriality to Perpetual Interwar"
Reception in the Thorp Library to follow talk.
"New Postcolonial Subjects"
Organized by the English Department's Postcolonial Colloquium
RSVP Required -- newsubjects0313@gmail.com
"Mansfield Park: Sir Thomas Bertram in Antigua"
"The Pathos of Modernism: Henry James, Virginia Woolf, and Gertrude Stein (with a coda on J.M. Coetzee)"
The 12th Annual Edward W. Said Memorial Lecture
Tariq Ali is a journalist, writer and filmmaker. He has written more than two dozen books on world history and politics, and seven novels (translated into over a dozen languages) as well as scripts for the stage and screen. He is an editor of New Left Review and lives in London.
"The Thin Red Line, Wallace Stevens, and the Problem of the War Hero"
" 'The Price of Value' -- on Poetry & Economics, Boethius and Contemporary Poetry"
Please contact Orlando Reade (osxr@princeton.edu) to receive a copy of the precirculated paper.
Lunch will be provided.
Modern Language Association Convention Reception, Friday, January 9, 2015 (5:00-7:00pm)
Graduate Conference in Slavic Languages and Literatures
Princeton University
October 17-18, 2014
For full conference program and schedule visit:
www.princeton.edu/piirs/research/piirs-conferences-and-wor/derrida
PLEASE JOIN US in welcoming Jean Bauer to Princeton at our OPEN HOUSE event, Monday, September 29th at 4:30pm at the new Center for Digital Humanities at Princeton in Green Hall.
Free & Open to the Public
2013-2014
"Irrational Actors: Literature and Logic in Early Modern England"
Symposium: Varieties of Materialism Today
Slavoj Zizek with Mladen Dolar and Alenka Zupancic
"Why Shylock Loses His Case: Judicial Rhetoric in The Merchant of Venice"
Reception in the Thorp Library to follow talk.
For more details and required registration, please visit:
http://www.princeton.edu/prcw/
"Natural History, Indian Vocabularies, and the Sovereignty of Land and Language in Jeffersonian America"
Lunch will be provided
Department of English Graduate Alumni Reception
University Graduate Alum Conference, "Many Minds, Many Stripes"
"After Benjamin: Theorizing Visual Culture in the Victorian Mediascape"
2012-2013
You Are Cordially Invited
To a Cooking Celebration
Sponsored by ENG 223: Literature and Food
Thursday May 2, 2013
1:30 to 2:20pm
Murray Dodge Hall
"A Romance Re-Tailored: Sartor Resartus and the Love Letters of Jane and Thomas Carlyle"
"A Crash Course in Criticism"
"Lament of the Makers: A Symposium on Conceptualism and Poetic Freedom"
Title TBA
"Presence of Mind"
Reception in the Thorp Library to follow talk.
"Sibling Rivalry as Narrative Form in Eliot's Mill on the Floss"
Graduate Workshop with Cathy Caruth
Presented by the Princeton Environmental Institute
The Intersections Working Group in English
"The Storms Behind the Storm We Feel: Melville's Civil War Weather Reports"
Reception in the Thorp Library to follow talk.
Graduate Seminar with short-term visiting fellow Stephen Orgel
2008-2009
Editor-in-Chief of Nature magazine Philip Campbell joins bioethics scholar Charis Thompson in a debate about the relationship between the idea of “pure science” and the ethical, racial, and gender politics of scientific inquiry, highlighting the importance of an ongoing dialogue between the Sciences and the Humanities for our present and future. Co-sponsored by the Center for Human Values and the Princeton Environmental Institute.