2009-10 Readings and Lectures
________________________________________________________
The Emily Dickinson Lecture,
courtesy of George and Barbara Kelly,
Presents
ELIZABETH ALEXANDER
Poet
Author of the Inaugural Poem, "Praise Song for the Day"
Thursday, September 17th
7:30 pm
Palmer Lipcon Auditorium, Palmer Museum of Art
**Please be advised that the seating capacity in the Palmer Lipcon auditorium is 150 persons maximum-we are unable to seat guests who arrive after the auditorium is full.**
Elizabeth Alexander is a poet, essayist, playwright, and teacher born in New York City and raised in Washington, DC. Alexander has degrees from Yale University and Boston University and completed her Ph.D. in English at the University of Pennsylvania. Most recently, she composed and delivered “Praise Song for the Day” for the inauguration of President Barack Obama. The poem has recently been published as a small book from Graywolf Press. In addition, she has published five books of poems: The Venus Hottentot (1990), Body of Life (1996), Antebellum Dream Book (2001), American Sublime (2005), which was one of three finalists for the Pulitzer Prize and was one of the American Library Association’s “Notable Books of the Year;” and her first young adult collection (co-authored with Marilyn Nelson), Miss Crandall’s School for Young Ladies and Little Misses of Color (2008 Connecticut Book Award). Her two collections of essays are The Black Interior (2004) and Power and Possibility (2007), and her play, “Diva Studies,” was produced at the Yale School of Drama.
Professor Alexander is the first recipient of the Alphonse Fletcher, Sr. Fellowship for work that “contributes to improving race relations in American society and furthers the broad social goals of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision of 1954.” She is the 2007 winner of the first Jackson Prize for Poetry, awarded by Poets & Writers, Inc. Other awards include a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, two Pushcart Prizes, the George Kent Award, given by Gwendolyn Brooks, a Guggenheim fellowship as well as the Quantrell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching at University of Chicago. She currently teaches in the Department African American Studies at Yale University.
_________________________________________
Mary E. Rolling Series Information
__________________________________________
Weiss Seminar Lecture Series
Philadelphia in the Age of Revolution
THE THIRD ANNUAL
JOSEPHINE BERRY WEISS INTERDISCIPLINARY HUMANITIES SEMINAR
TAUGHT BY PENN STATE FACULTY MEMBER
Sean X. Goudie, Associate Professor of English
The Weiss Seminar is Generously Funded by the Josephine Berry Weiss Chair in the Humanities Endowment
LECTURES ARE AT 2:30-3:45 IN 110 BUSINESS BUILDING
The capital of the United States in the late eighteenth century, Philadelphia was a vibrant, if volatile, social and cultural location in the Atlantic World. Its mercantile, diplomatic, and military relations were extensive and wide-reaching, and the city’s involvement in radical revolutionary movements, most notably the American Revolution and the Haitian Revolution, has been the topic of much scholarly discussion across disciplines in recent years. Philadelphia was also a leading site in the advancement of scientific and medical knowledge and creative home to many important authors, playwrights, painters, musicians, and other artists. This interdisciplinary seminar will ponder the following questions: What social and cultural transformations unfolded during the age of revolution in this major North American city? How might such changes be linked to developments in the wider Atlantic world that shaped them and to which they responded? Students and members of the public will gauge possible responses to these questions by considering works in a variety of cultural forms—including paintings, poetry, plays, essays, political and scientific tracts and treatises, histories, and the novel in its early “American” incarnation. They will do so in the context of a full schedule of seminar talks and discussions led by Penn State faculty members as well as invited guests from universities and research centers located in the United States and Europe, renowned experts from disciplines as diverse as English, history, theater, political science, art history, medicine, and law.
August 27, Thursday
Re-Finding the Founding: Reconsidering Philadelphia in the Age of Revolution
Sean X. Goudie
September 3, Thursday
Charlotte Temple (1791): The Tearjerker as Harbinger of Revolutions
Michael W. Zuckerman
Professor of History
University of Pennsylvania
September 10, Thursday
Benjamin Franklin and Educational Liberalism
Carla Mulford
Associate Professor of English
Penn State
September 17, Thursday
Religion in a Revolutionary Age: Pennsylvania and Transatlantic Turmoil
William Pencak
Professor of American History
Penn State
September 24, Thursday
Foreign Founders: How European Financiers Checked America’s Democratic Experiment
Terry Bouton
Associate Professor of History
University of Maryland, Baltimore County
October 1, Thursday
Apocalypse on Market Street: Women, Space, and the Revolutionary City
Kate Davies
Senior Lecturer in American Literature
Newcastle University, United Kingdom
October 8, Thursday
Wars for Independence: Pennsylvanians and Native Americans, 1750-1800
Daniel K. Richter
Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Term Professor of History and the Richard S. Dunn Director of the McNeil Center for Early American Studies
University of Pennsylvania
October 15, Thursday
“My Brethren of the Quill”: Writing and Revolution among the Irish in Philadelphia
Rochelle Zuck
Assistant Professor of English
University of Minnesota Duluth
October 22, Thursday
Franklin’s Philadelphia: Science and the Arts in the Age of Revolution
Opening Roundtable
October 29, Thursday
Philadelphia Faces the Haitian Revolution
Ashli White
Assistant Professor of History
University of Miami
November 5, Thursday
A Hemispheric Independence: Spanish-Language Writing in Early Filadelfia
Rodrigo Lazo
Associate Professor of English
University of California, Irvine
November 12, Thursday
Bermuda and the Age of Revolution
Clarence Maxwell
Assistant Professor of History
Millersville University
November 19, Thursday
The West Indies, Commerce and a Revolution in the Early American Theater
Sean X. Goudie
December 3, Thursday
The Quaker City and the Sea: Philadelphia in Oceanic Literature and History
Hester Blum
Associate Professor of English
Penn State
December 10, Thursday
Closing Forum: A Group Discussion of The Whiskey Rebels: A Novel (2008), by David Liss
