Come blow off some mid-semester steam and catch up at our Happy Hour TONIGHT starting at 5 pm at Rattle n’ Hum (33rd between 5th and Madison, http://www.rattlenhumbarnyc.com/). If you want to join us after class or other commitments but aren’t sure if we’re still hanging about, feel free to shoot Bethany an e-mail (bethanyholmstrom@gmail.com) before heading over. On the agenda (to make sure we’re drinking craft beer and eating cheese fries with a purpose): choose a text for our next book club meet-up later this semester, come up with some ways to exchange/share sources and start a running resource list of interdisciplinary books, and generally relax and socialize.

All are welcome. Hope to see you there!

We’d love for you to join us for two exciting Americanist events hosted by the CUNY Americanist group (the latter co-hosted by Studies in American Fiction). Both will take place in the English department lounge (4406).

Friday, February 25

2:00PM “‘I Hear America Singing’: A Live Performance and Discussion of Music of Walt Whitman’s Era.” Performed by Steve Vitoff (guitar and vocals) featuring Professor David S. Reynolds providing historical and cultural background.

4:00PM Chistopher Castiglia (Penn State), “A Usable Past? How Romanticism Saved Criticism from the Cold War.”

Here is an abstract of the talk:

American critics who wrote during the Cold War—figures like Newton Arvin, Richard Chase, R.W.B. Lewis, and Richard Poirier—are often characterized now as advocates of apolitical turns to genre and literary form, of national exceptionalism, and of conformity to conventional lifestyles.  In this paper, I revisit these critics to show how they adapted Romanticism to escape and, in many cases, to counter Cold War norms and values, often through the use of same-sex intimacy and imaginative world-making.  Through a reparative reading of these critics, I hope to offer a model for how critics today might revalue terms central to these critics—idealism, imagination, inspiration—in ways that take us beyond the Cold War melancholy that has shaped a good deal of contemporary Americanist scholarship.

The events will be followed by a lovely Friday Forum reception.

Hoping you can join us!

Grab a copy of Michael Leja’s Looking Askance: Skepticism and American Art From Eakins to Duchamp (University of California Press, 2004) and join us for a chat at Slattery’s Midtown Pub (E 36th between 5th and Madison) on Friday, December 3rd, starting at 5pm. Please register on the Registration page.

See everyone there!

Meet up with you Fellow Americanists at Rattle N’ Hum (E 33rd between Madison and 5th) for a drink and a much-needed break! We’ll start at 5 pm, and end…?…

http://rattlenhumbarnyc.com/

Come join us in Room 5409 today (Wednesday, 10/6) at 4:30 for our first mock conference panel.

The panelists will include:

Talia Argondezzi
“Transnational Biopolitics and the Divided Self in Sansay’s Secret History

Allison Brown
“Discovering the Extended Caribbean: The Literary Connections between the Caribbean and and the American South”
Nick Grant-Collins “Algerian Slavery and the Dangers of Recognition: Enclosing ‘Liberty’ and Valuing Freedom in Slaves of Algiers and Humanity in Algiers

Frances Tran “Circum-Atlantic Capitalism, Correspondence, and the Question of Cultural Cohesion”

Hope to see everyone there!

Please check back  for more information about the group and our upcoming events…

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