Turnstyle Reading Series

JAN HELLER LEVI, JOHN WEIR, and others
February 9th 2010, Tuesday, 6:30pm, Martin E. Segal Theatre

Writers and graduating students from the four MFA Programs in Creative Writing (City College, Brooklyn College, Hunter College, and Queens College) come together for readings of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction at the Graduate Center. Join Jan Heller Levi, John Weir, and others for an evening of cross-campus, cross-genre readings.

Co-sponsored by the CUNY MFA in Creative Writing Affiliation Group and the Office of Academic Affairs

An Evening with Leon Wieseltier

February 10th 2010, Wednesday, 6:30pm, Elebash Recital Hall

For over 25 years, Leon Wieseltier has been the literary editor of The New Republic. In that capacity, he has worked with some of the leading writers of our time. He regularly pens TNR’s Washington Diary column and has established himself as one of the most important and erudite critics at work today. He is also the author of the widely acclaimed Jewish theological rumination Kaddish. Richard Wolin is Distinguished Professor of History at the Graduate Center, CUNY.

Co-sponsored by the PhD Program in History

The Changing Contours of American Religiosity

COURTNEY BENDER and CLAUDE FISCHER in Conversation

February 18th 2010, Thursday, 6:30pm, Martin E. Segal Theatre

Join two prominent analysts of American culture for a conversation about the changing American religious landscape, particularly the growth in the population of those who understand themselves as “non-affiliated” and “spiritual but not religious”. Courtney Bender is Associate Professor of Religion at Columbia University and the author of Heaven’s Kitchen: Practicing Religion at God’s Love We Deliver. Claude Fischer is Professor of Sociology at UC Berkeley. His books include Made in America: A Social History of American Culture and Character. Moderated by John Torpey, Professor of Sociology, the Graduate Center, CUNY.

The Empty City: American Film and the Imagination of Disaster

MARIANNA TORGOVNICK
February 19th 2010, Friday, 4:00pm, Room 4406 (English Lounge)

Marianna Torgovnick is Professor of English at Duke University and Director of the Duke in New York Arts and Media Program each Fall and Summer. Torgovnick is the author of six books, including the acclaimed Gone Primitive, its sequel, Primitive Passions, and an award-winning memoir called Crossing Ocean Parkway. Her most recent book The War Complex explores the memory of World War II and the imagination of destruction at the heart of modernity.

Climate Justice: Politics, Culture, Economics

February 22nd 2010, Monday, 6:30pm, Martin E. Segal Theatre

What is the relationship between global warming and poverty? In light of the Copenhagen summit and the widening gap between industrialized nations, developing nations, and the rest of the global South, this event will examine the political, economic, and cultural impacts of climate change. Michael Dorsey, Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies, Dartmouth University, and a prominent analyst of the political economy of biodiversity and environment justice, will speak with Ashley Dawson, Associate Professor of English, the Graduate Center, CUNY, along with other scholars and writers.

Co-sponsored by the Center for Place, Culture and Politics

Chanticleer and the Legacies of the Black Arts Movement

February 23rd 2010, Tuesday, 6:30pm, Martin E. Segal Theatre

Culture-maker Raven Chanticleer, a fashion designer, dancer, sculptor, storyteller, and perhaps most famously the founder, craftsman and proprietor of the Harlem African-American Wax and History Museum, is one of the many black artists on this side of the Beat generation whose legacy has been obscured. Join Nikki Johnson, a photographer with the only remaining documentation of Chanticleer’s work, along with filmmaker and artist Camille Billops and professor emeritus James Hatch, who together curate the Hatch-Billops collection, an extensive archive of 20th Century Black Culture to discuss the case of Chanticleer and legacies of many other black artists. Other special guests to be announced. Moderated by David Henderson, poet, author and one of the founders of the Umbra Arts Movement.

Tendencies: Poetics and Practice

AKILAH OLIVER, KATE EICHHORN, CHARLES BERNSTEIN
February 24th 2010, Wednesday, 6:30pm, Martin E. Segal Theatre

This series of talks by major poets, curated by Tim Peterson and titled in honor of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, explores the relationship between contemporary poetic manifesto, practice, queer theory and pedagogy.

Visit http://tendenciespoetics.blogspot.com for commentary and sample recordings from past events, as well as news about upcoming events.

Co-sponsored by Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies, Ph.D. Program in English, and Poetics Group

Byzantine Archaeology: New Approaches, New Discoveries

March 1st 2010, Monday, 4:00pm, Room 9206

John F. Haldon, Professor of Byzantine History, Princeton University, will speak on "Aspects of Byzantine Urbanism after the 6th Century: The Case of Euchaita."

This lecture series aims to introduce some of the most important projects currently underway in Byzantine archaeology, a rapidly developing field of interdisciplinary studies dedicated to the interpretation of the material remains of the former Byzantine or Eastern Roman Empire (c. 330-1453 CE). By combining traditional textual interpretations with archaeological analyses of artifacts, human and organic remains, architecture, and settlements, Byzantine archaeology has ultimately revealed entire landscapes. The speakers are paired with respondents from the CUNY faculty from a variety of disciplines. All events will be moderated by Eric Ivison, Professor of History at the Graduate Center and the College of Staten Island, CUNY.

Re-Orientale: Reading Orientalism with Gayatri Spivak and Kyoo Lee

March 2nd 2010, Tuesday, 6:30pm, Martin E. Segal Theatre

This public seminar with Gayatri Spivak sets out to explore the heart of Occidentalism from the outside in by using Edward Said’s field-defining modern classic as the starting point. Gayatri Spivak is University Professor and Director of the Center for Comparative Literature and Society, Columbia University. Kyoo Lee is Assistant Professor of Philosophy, John Jay College, and Resident Mellon Fellow at the Center for the Humanities, the Graduate Center.

Tendencies: Poetics and Practice

ERICA KAUFMAN, DOUGLAS A. MARTIN, MINA PAM DICK
March 9th 2010, Tuesday, 6:30pm, Martin E. Segal Theatre

Turnstyle Reading Series

RICK PEARSE, EMILY RABOTEAU, and others
March 10th 2010, Wednesday, 6:30pm, Martin E. Segal Theatre

Beats and Beyond: Documenting the Poets of the 60’s

March 15th 2010, Monday, 6:30pm, The Skylight Room (9100)

Join Cecilia Vicuña, Melanie La Rosa, and Henry Ferrini for a conversation about films that bring into cinematic focus the untold histories of a radical literary era. The poet and artist Cecilia Vicuña, editor of The Oxford Book of Latin American Poetry and a contributor to El Corno Emplumado, will comment on “El Corno Emplumado - A Story From the Sixties,” which follows its filmmakers on a journey across the United States to Mexico and into the memories of the poets who 40 years earlier had been involved in the bilingual poetry magazine El Corno Emplumado/The Plumed Horn. Melanie La Rosa will discuss “This Bird Flies Backward,” her work-in-progress about the life and work of poet Diane di Prima; and Henry Ferrini will talk about his “Polis Is This: Charles Olson and the Persistence of Place.” Excerpts of films will be screened.

Co-sponsored by the Ph.D. Program in Hispanic and Luso-Brazilian Literatures and Languages and the Doctoral Students Council

Multiformalisms: Postmodern Poetics of Form

March 16th 2010, Tuesday, 6:30pm, Rooms 9206-9207

Join editor Annie Finch for a lively discussion of new directions in poetic form and theory through juxtaposition of such topics as traditional formalism and flarf, the American long poem and native Hawaiian poetry, rhyme in Paul Muldoon and textual variability in New Media poetry, Susan Howe and Lucinda Roy, jazz and Asian American poetics; and much more. With poet Marilyn Hacker and other contributors to the collection Multiformalisms: Postmodern Poetics of Form.

Co-sponsored by the Poetics Group

Only a God Can Save Us: Martin Heidegger and the Third Reich

Film Screening and Discussion
March 17th 2010, Wednesday, 6:00pm, Proshansky Auditorium

Join us for the American premiere of the documentary Only A God Can Save Us, a critical examination of Martin Heidegger’s thought and actions during the Third Reich. Fifteen years in the making, the film reveals how essential elements of Heidegger’s philosophy led him to become an enthusiastic supporter of Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist revolution. The film also addresses his long post-war silence about the Holocaust and his reluctance to make a public apology. Following the screening we will host a discussion with filmmaker Jeffery Van Davis and Richard Wolin, Distinguished Professor of History, the Graduate Center.

Co-sponsored by the PhD Program in History

Byzantine Archaeology: New Approaches, New Discoveries

March 22 2010, Monday, 4:00pm, Room 9205

Joachim Henning, Professor at Institut für Archäologische Wissenschaften, Abteilung Vor- und Frühgeschichte, Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität, Frankfurt am Main, will speak on "Excavations at Pliska, Capital of the First Bulgarian Empire."

This lecture series aims to introduce some of the most important projects currently underway in Byzantine archaeology, a rapidly developing field of interdisciplinary studies dedicated to the interpretation of the material remains of the former Byzantine or Eastern Roman Empire (c. 330-1453 CE). By combining traditional textual interpretations with archaeological analyses of artifacts, human and organic remains, architecture, and settlements, Byzantine archaeology has ultimately revealed entire landscapes. The speakers are paired with respondents from the CUNY faculty from a variety of disciplines. All events will be moderated by Eric Ivison, Professor of History at the Graduate Center and the College of Staten Island, CUNY.

New Visions, New Activism, New American Poetry: Margaret Randall in Conversation

March 22nd 2010, Monday, 6:30pm, The Skylight Room (9100)

The poet, political activist and publisher Margaret Randall helped shift the frame of New American Poetry beyond the US with her own political activism and by publishing El Corno Emplumado / The Plumed Horn (1962-1969), a forum for innovative writing from all parts of the Americas featuring the work of major poets from the United States, Canada and Latin America in English, Spanish and Portuguese. Join her and the Graduate Center’s Ammiel Alcalay, Professor of English and Comparative Literature in a conversation about her work and El Corno Emplumado, then on the cutting edge of independent publishing and now an archival treasure.

Co-sponsored by the Ph.D. Program in Hispanic and Luso-Brazilian Literatures and Languages and the Doctoral Students Council

Byzantine Archaeology: New Approaches, New Discoveries

April 6th 2010, Tuesday, 4:00pm, Room 9205

Alessandra Ricci, Professor in the Department of Archaeology and History of Art, Koç University, Istanbul, will speak on "Metropolitan Legends: Excavation and ArchaeoPark at the Byzantine Monastery of Satyros (Küçükyalı) at Istanbul."

This lecture series aims to introduce some of the most important projects currently underway in Byzantine archaeology, a rapidly developing field of interdisciplinary studies dedicated to the interpretation of the material remains of the former Byzantine or Eastern Roman Empire (c. 330-1453 CE). By combining traditional textual interpretations with archaeological analyses of artifacts, human and organic remains, architecture, and settlements, Byzantine archaeology has ultimately revealed entire landscapes. The speakers are paired with respondents from the CUNY faculty from a variety of disciplines. All events will be moderated by Eric Ivison, Professor of History at the Graduate Center and the College of Staten Island, CUNY.

Who Protects Antiquity?

JAMES CUNO, LAWRENCE ROTHFIELD, JAMES COBEN
April 7th 2010, Wednesday, 6:30pm, Proshansky Auditorium

While archaeological sites from China to Peru are being destroyed by looters in search of saleable antiquities, those charged with custodianship of the past are locked in fierce debate. Archaeologists, leaders of cultural heritage organizations, and ministers of culture, dealers, collectors, curators, and museum directors cannot come to terms. Who is responsible for preserving cultural heritage? Participants include James Cuno, Director, The Art Institute of Chicago and author of Who Owns Antiquity?: Museums and the Battle over Our Ancient Heritage; Lawrence Rothfield, author of Rape of Mesopotamia: Behind the Looting of the Iraq Museum and Associate Professor of English at The University of Chicago; Lawrence Coben, Director of the Sustainable Preservation Initiative, and faculty affiliate in the department of archeology, University of Pennsylvania. Moderated by Joel Allen, Professor of Classics and History at the Graduate Center, CUNY.

Tendencies: Poetics and Practice

DODIE BELLAMY, EILEEN MYLES, KEVIN KILLIAN

April 9th 2010, Friday, 6:30pm, Martin E. Segal Theatre

Works in Progress: Using the Evidence, Changing the Story

April 12th 2010, Monday, 4:00pm, English Lounge (Room 4406)

Kathy Chamberlain, chair of the Women Writing Women’s Lives seminar, discusses the process of extricating Jane Welsh Carlyle from Victorian myths about her and her husband Thomas Carlyle that persist into the present.

Co-sponsored by the Women’s Studies Certificate Program, the Center for the Study of Women and Society, the PhD Program in English, and the Leon Levy Center for Biography

Byzantine Archaeology: New Approaches, New Discoveries

April 13th 2010, Tuesday, 1:30pm, Room 9205

Christopher Sherwin Lightfoot, Associate Curator of Roman Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, will speak on "Boom or Bust? Evidence for the Byzantine Economy in Anatolia from the Excavations at Amorium."

This lecture series aims to introduce some of the most important projects currently underway in Byzantine archaeology, a rapidly developing field of interdisciplinary studies dedicated to the interpretation of the material remains of the former Byzantine or Eastern Roman Empire (c. 330-1453 CE). By combining traditional textual interpretations with archaeological analyses of artifacts, human and organic remains, architecture, and settlements, Byzantine archaeology has ultimately revealed entire landscapes. The speakers are paired with respondents from the CUNY faculty from a variety of disciplines. All events will be moderated by Eric Ivison, Professor of History at the Graduate Center and the College of Staten Island, CUNY.

Nonfiction under Oath

Tuesday, April 13 2010, 6:30pm, Martin E Segal Theatre

Why is nonfiction defined in the negative and how might it be revalued for its own sake? Join three pioneering nonfiction writers as they read from new work and discuss the challenges and rewards of working in prose. John D'Agata teaches creative writing at the University of Iowa; his new book, About a Mountain, is a book-length essay on nuclear waste and suicide in Las Vegas, Nevada. David Shields, who teaches English at the University of Washington and Creative Writing at Warren Wilson College, is most recently the author of Reality Hunger: A Manifesto, an ars poetica of writing "truthiness" in an unbearably artificial world. Brenda Wineapple is the Director of the Leon Levy Center for Biography at the Graduate Center, CUNY and the author, most recently, of White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson. Her anthology, 19th Century American Writers on Writing (series editor Edward Hirsch) will be published next fall, and she's currently writing a book about America, 1848-1877. Moderated by Wayne Koestenbaum, poet, novelist, and professor of English at The Graduate Center, CUNY, who is currently working on a nonfiction book about Harpo Marx.

Co-sponsored by the Leon Levy Center for Biography

On Translation and Biography

April 21st 2010, Wednesday, 7:00pm, Elebash Recital Hall

This discussion will feature such translators, writers, and biographers as Gregory Rabassa (CUNY), Benjamin Moser (books editor at Harper’s and author of the acclaimed Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector), and Frederick Brown (author of award-winning biographies of Cocteau, Zola, Flaubert, whose new book is For the Soul of France: Culture Wars in the Age of Dreyfus), on the problems of biography, language, nuance, and interpretation in multiple languages.

Co-sponsored by the Leon Levy Center for Biography

Annual Chapbook Festival

Monday May 3 and Tuesday May 4, 2010

The Festival celebrates the chapbook as a work of art and as a vehicle for alternative and emerging writers and publishers. Now in its second year, the festival features a two-day bookfair with chapbook publishers from around the country, workshops, marathon poetry readings, and a closing-night reading of prize-winning Chapbook Fellows.

Workshops will include: Producing Chapbooks: A Workshop for Poets, Producing Chapbooks: A Workshop for Publishers, Do-It-Yourself Chapbooks: Make and Distribute Your Own, and Chapbooks as Art Objects.

For more information, please click here.

Co-sponsored by The Office of Academic Affairs, The Center for the Humanities, The Graduate Center and MFA Programs in Creative Writing of the City University of New York, The Center for Book Arts, Poets House, Poetry Society of America, and Poets & Writers

Tendencies: Poetics and Practice

JACK KIMBALL, CA CONRAD, STACY SZYMASZEK

May 6th 2010, Thursday, 6:30pm, The Skylight Room (9100)

Turnstyle Reading Series

RICHARD SCHOTTER, COLUM MCCANN, and others

May 10th, Monday, 6:30pm, The Skylight Room (9100)