Symposia/Conferences
Upcoming Events
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 la
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 metaphysica
Two Wordsworths: Mountain-Climbing, Letter-Writing
Kirsten Silva Gruesz studies the changing conditions of literary production and reception: who gets to say what’s good, or what’s worth remembering? What languages and linguistic registers have social power, and who gets access to them?
'The Netherlands: Culture and Global History, 1500-1700', 8-10 April, 2020. Conference details, including speakers and schedules, can be seen at https://netherlands.princeton.edu/ and there will be regular updates (with pape
Past Events
2019-2020
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
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/
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.
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
University Graduate Alum Conference, "Many Minds, Many Stripes"
Department of English Graduate Alumni Reception
"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.