Whitman Panels at American Literature Association Meeting
At this year’s annual meeting of the American Literature Association in Boston (May 23-26, 2013), there will be two panels on Whitman. The first panel is “Walt Whitman: New Insights,” chaired by Kenneth Price (University of Nebraska-Lincoln), with the following papers: “‘We fathom you not – we love you’: Walt Whitman’s Social Ontology and Radical Democracy,” Ryan Cull (New Mexico State University); “‘Even the Heavens Are Not Stable’: Whitman and Rafinesque,” Robert Scholnick (College of William and Mary); and “Gossip + Time = Scholarship: New Light on Whitman’s Bohemian Period from the Thomas Butler Gunn Diaries,” Edward Whitley (Lehigh University). The second panel is “Walt Whitman: Recovering Lost Influences,” chaired by Jerome Loving (Texas A&M University), with the following papers: “‘Where the Spirit of Fellowship is Mortised’: The Walt Whitman-Herbert Spencer Center and the Arts and Crafts Socialists of To-Morrow,” Timothy Robbins (University of Iowa); “‘Through the lilac mists’: Whitman’s Presence in the Poetry of African American Women of the Harlem Renaissance,” Kevin McMullen (University of Nebraska-Lincoln); and “Erasing Race: The Lost Black Presence in Whitman’s Civil War Writings,” Ed Folsom (University of Iowa). Both panels will take place on the afternoon of Friday, May 24. Details of the conference, including schedule, registration, and hotel information, are available at www.americanliterature.org
The Transatlantic Walt Whitman Association is pleased to announce
THE SIXTH ANNUAL INTERNATIONAL WHITMAN WEEK
Seminar and Symposium: Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, U.S.A. June 24-June 29, 2013
Invitation for Applications to the Transatlantic Walt Whitman Seminar
Founded in Paris in 2007, The Transatlantic Walt Whitman Association (TWWA) invites students, researchers, and Whitman enthusiasts to participate in its sixth annual Whitman Week, consisting of a Seminar for advanced students interested in Whitman and Whitman’s poetry, and a Symposium bringing together international scholars and graduate students. Previous annual Seminars have been held in Dortmund, Germany (2008), Tours, France (2009), Macerata, Italy (2010), Araraquara, Sao Paulo, Brazil (2011), and Pobierowo, Poland. The 2013 events will be held at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, on the shores of Lake Michigan, and just north of Chicago, one of the most vibrant, architecturally-compelling, and artistically-alive cities in the world.
TWWA’s Mission Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass remains a landmark of modern poetry and world literature. Every year new editions of Whitman’s work are published in a variety of languages; an ever-expanding group of poets “reply” to him in their poetry; his poems are set to music and are quoted in films; he is involved in the discussion of political and cultural issues, as well as of gender and sexuality; and he continues to be a huge presence in college and university curricula globally. In order to respond adequately to this international phenomenon, TWWA sponsors a yearly International Whitman Seminar, during which students from different countries come together for an intensive, credit-bearing Seminar taught by an international team of Whitman specialists.
Seminar Structure In the morning classes, focusing on some of Whitman’s major poems, students will have an opportunity to confront Whitman’s books, share their readings of key poems and clusters, and discuss Whitman’s attempts at a multilingual English, his cohesive representation of human relations, and his work’s international significance. In addition, there will be afternoon workshops on the reception of Whitman in various countries, as well as the translation of his poems into various languages, including German, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Polish, and Asian languages. (The specific readings that will be the focus of the Seminar will be announced at a later date, at least a month before the start of the Seminar.)
Faculty The team of international instructors for 2013 will be Éric Athenot (Professor of American Studies, Université François-Rabelais, Tours, rance), translator of the 1855 Leaves of Grass and author of Walt Whitman, poète-cosmos; Christine Gehrhardt (Full Professor of American Literature and Culture, Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg, Germany), author of A Place for Humility: Whitman, Dickinson, and the Natural World; Virginia Jackson (Professor and UIC Chair in Rhetoric and Communication, English Department, University of California ar Irvine), author of Before Modernism: Nineteenth-Century American Poetry in Public (forthcoming), and Dickinson’s Misery: A Theory of Lyric Reading; and Ivy Wilson (Associate Professor of English and Director of the American Studies Program at Northwestern University), author of Specters of Democracy: Blackness and the Aesthetics of Politics in the Antebellum U.S.
Housing International students will live together at no charge with Northwestern University students, thus creating opportunities for meaningful intercultural dialogue.
Symposium Students are invited to attend or take part in the Symposium, held immediately following the Seminar, and featuring scholarly papers by Whitman scholars and graduate students from various countries. A separate paper proposal must be submitted in order to participate in the Symposium. This year’s Symposium theme is ”Whitman North and South.” The Call for Papers appears below.
Applications for the Seminar should include a curriculum vitae, a one-page statement of interest, and a short letter of support from an instructor who knows the applicant well. All of these materials, including the letter of recommendation, should be submitted electronically to the Northwestern University Co-Chairs of the Seminar, Professor Betsy Erkkila and Professor Jay Grossman, at twwa@northwestern.edu by February 20, 2013.
The Transatlantic Walt Whitman Association is pleased to announce
An Open Call for Papers
WHITMAN NORTH AND SOUTH
The Sixth Annual International Walt Whitman Symposium to be held at Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, U.S.A. June 28 & 29, 2013
In 2013, the 150th anniversary of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address and the Emancipation Proclamation, TWWA welcomes papers discussing Walt Whitman’s writings in relation to any aspect of the U.S. Civil war in national or international memory. In addition to papers that interpret Whitman’s work in terms of the War between the Northern and Southern States, we also welcome papers that approach Whitman either hemispherically or globally, focusing on the legacies, significance, and lasting consequences of Whitman’s writings as they have circulated, been translated, revised, and reworked by different language constituencies, nationalities, and literary schools in Central and South America and in the Northern and Southern hemispheres of the globe more generally.
One-page abstracts should be sent electronically, no later than April 1, 2013, to all four Symposium Organizers: Professor Ed Folsom (ed-folsom@uiowa.edu), Professor Ken Price (kprice2@unl.edu), Professor Jay Grossman (twwa@northwestern.edu), and Professor Vanessa Steinroetter ( vanessa.steinroetter@washburn.edu).
Announcing the Ninth International Melville Conference:
Melville and Whitman in Washington: The Civil War Years and After
History, Politics, Nation, Memory
Featured Speakers: Ken Price (University of Nebraska-Lincoln), Ed Folsom (University of Iowa), Elizabeth Renker (Ohio State University), and John Bryant (Hofstra University)
Washington, DC, June 4-7, 2013
Our Ninth International Melville Conference, coinciding with a major year of the Civil War sesquicentennial observances, focuses on the Washington-area War experiences of Melville and Whitman, seen largely through their poetry, private writings, and time spent in the capital area—although all scholarly topics will be considered, including approaches to teaching, digitizing, and recontextualizing the authors and their milieu. We anticipate a wide range of scholarly presentations, teaching roundtables, several plenary addresses, digital demonstrations, and cultural events.
We are interested in paper and panel topics that include (but are not limited to) the following topic areas:
- Single or joint critical / teaching approaches to the authors and their work (pre- or post-War)
- Washington, DC, and / or the Civil War in their work: North and South; Unionism; battles; key events of 1863 (e.g., New York Draft Riots, the Gettysburg Address and Emancipation Proclamation, Massachusetts 54th)
- Digital Scholarship, Archiving, and Scholarly Editing
- New Media, Transmedia, Adaptation, and Artistic (Re)Interpretation
- (Trans)Nationalism, Gender, Slavery, Race, and / or Politics
- The homosocial, the homosexual, and / or the homoerotic in their work and the war
- Relationships with Douglass, Alcott, Jacobs, and other authors involved in the war
- Comparisons with Civil War writings of Dickinson, Lowell, Whittier, and other poets
- Attitudes toward Grant, Lincoln, Davis, and other political figures
Send all questions and proposals to hmwwdc2013@gmail.com by October 1, 2012.
Conference Committee
- Christopher Sten, GWU
- Joseph Fruscione, UMBC; GWU
- Matthew K. Gold, CUNY Grad Center
- Karen Karbiener, NYU
- Dennis Berthold, Texas A&M
- Wyn Kelley, MIT
- Tyler Hoffman, Rutgers-Camden
- Martin Murray, Washington Friends of Walt Whitman
- Kim Roberts, Beltway Poetry Quarterly
- Neil Richardson, UDC
Find us on Facebook: Melville and Whitman in Washington: The Civil War Years and After
UPDATE ON THE WHITMAN RECORDING
Jim Hermanson, on his blog "The Red Wheelbarrow," offers an extended entry on the history of the controversy surrounding the recording of Whitman reading four lines of his poem “America.” The recording resurfaced in 1992, during the centennial of Whitman’s death. The wax cylinder recording had originally been played on a 1951 NBC radio program hosted by Leon Pearson, called “Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow,” on a special episode focusing on the voices of poets. Ed Folsom wrote about the recording in WWQR in spring 1992, and the recording is available on the Walt Whitman Archive. Hermanson offers a full and balanced account of the history of the recording and the evidence for its authenticity or lack thereof.
The Walt Whitman Birthplace Needs Your Support!
The Walt Whitman Birthplace in Huntington, Long Island is a New York Historic Site dedicated to educating the public on Whitman’s life and times and honoring his contribution to America’s cultural heritage. Visitors may tour the house in which Whitman spent his first four years, visit the Interpretive Center, and take part in numerous events and activities that celebrate Whitman’s literary legacy.
As a small non-profit organization, the Walt Whitman Birthplace Association is currently feeling the impact of these challenging economic times. In spite of stringent efforts to cut costs and the efforts to initiate new fundraising events, WWBA is on the edge of its ability to meet expenses. Current projections indicate that sometime in the spring of 2009, the organization may be unable to continue their present operation. State and local grand cutbacks have resulted in a $55,000 shortfall in its $200,000 budget.
Public and private support is essential in keeping the Birthplace open and its programs active. You can help in several ways: by becoming a Member of the Walt Whitman Birthplace Association, making a donation (in-kind goods and services are gratefully accepted), or simply by visiting and inviting others to do the same. Please go to our website to learn more about all of these options: www.waltwhitman.org.
The Transatlantic Whitman Association
In February 2007, fifteen scholars from Europe, the United States, and South America met in Paris, France, at Denis Diderot University (Paris 7) to organize The Transatlantic Walt Whitman Association. The group planned future conferences, seminars, and translation activities, and approved a charter for the organization, which will be headquartered at Tours University, academic home of Éric Athenot, who initiated the meeting. Anyone interested in more information about the Association or anyone wishing to join should contact Athenot by e-mail at eric.athenot@wanadoo.fr.
The Charter of The Transatlantic Walt Whitman Association
Preamble:
At the start of the twentieth century, a group of eminent Europeans sought
“to found in Europe an organization . . . [to] assemble all the European admirers of
[Walt Whitman] and propagate his works” (Letter from Léon Bazalgette to Johannes Schlaf,
1907). A century later, The Transatlantic Walt Whitman Association believes that Whitman
remains a crucial figure for remembering and re-imagining the literary, critical, and
political roles that poetry plays in the world. The Association explores and fosters the
artistic, democratic, and intercultural vision of Walt Whitman in the context of the
need for improved European and transatlantic cooperation.
The Transatlantic Walt Whitman Association seeks to:
- promote the cultural and literary presence of Walt Whitman, re-reading and re-writing him for the current age;
- understand Whitman’s significance in Europe’s literary, political, and cultural heritage, as well as Europe’s influence on Whitman’s life and writings;
- promote the teaching of Whitman’s works, especially in their intercultural contexts;
- create a network of collaboration and exchange among teachers and students of Whitman, both within Europe and across the Atlantic;
- cooperate with, and support, the work of The Walt Whitman Archive and of The Walt Whitman Quarterly Review in making Whitman’s writings, as well as writings about them, available to a broadening international audience;
- endorse and enable the work of Whitman’s translators;
- explore and foster the intersections between Whitman’s writings and other forms of cultural, social, and political expression.
February, 2007
Paris, France Éric Athenot (Tours University), Marina Camboni
(University of Macerata), Mario Corona (University of Bergamo), Jeanne Cortiel (Dortmund
University), Sami El Hage (Paris IV), Betsy Erkkila (NorthwesternUniversity), Ed Folsom
(The University of Iowa), Christine Gerhardt (Dortmund University), Jay Grossman
(Northwestern University), Walter Gruenzweig (Dortmund University), Merel Leeman
(Amsterdam), Kenneth M. Price (University of Nebraska), Marta Skwara (Szczecin
University), Maria Clara Paro (University of São Paulo)
Whitman Making Books / Books Making Whitman Available
Ed Folsom’s catalog/commentary for the Whitman Making Books / Books Making Whitman symposium and exhibition held this past fall at The University of Iowa is now available for purchase from WWQR. The book is 80 pages, with over a hundred full-color illustrations of Whitman’s books. Folsom’s commentary explores Whitman as a bookmaker, as someone fully invested in the creation of his books. Tracing Whitman’s career as a printer and bookmaker from his early years in New York to his final years in Camden, New Jersey, Folsom has created what Joel Myerson in a review has described as “much more that the record of an exhibition—it is a biography of Whitman that will stand the test of time.” “Reversing [the] usual perspective,” writes Myerson, “Folsom focuses on Whitman’s print career to tell us about his life, both internal and external,” and, “in so doing, he overturns many critical assumptions about Whitman’s writings.” The book was published by The University of Iowa Obermann Center for Advanced Studies, and a limited number of copies are available for $15 (includes shipping). Checks should be made out to “WWQR” and sent to: Walt Whitman Quarterly Review, 308 EPB, The University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA 52242-1492.