Reading Comparatively: Theories, Practices, Communities (2010)

Event Information

Thursday, November 4, 2010
Friday, November 5, 2010

The Center for Literary and Comparative Studies of the Department of English, in conjunction with the School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, and the Department of Classics, has organized this two-day symposium. A broad aim of "Reading Comparatively: Theories, Practices, Communities" is to enable a critical rethinking of the act of reading, which is what we in departments throughout the College of Arts and Humanities undertake on a daily basis, in our scholarly work as well as in the classroom. To that end, the conference brings together scholars working across the College on the topic of comparative reading writ large. Conference participants will address the ways in which their work is comparative beyond the common interpretation of reading in different languages.

Keynote speakers include Louis Menand, Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of English at Harvard University; Zita Nunes, Associate Professor of English at the University of Maryland; and Eric Zakim, Associate Professor of Hebrew at the University of Maryland.

For more information, contact Robert Levine, rlevine@umd.edu.

Schedule

1:15 pm. Welcome and Introductions
Ulrich Recital Hall, Tawes Hall
Robert Levine, Professor and Director, Center for Literary & Comparative Studies, Department of English
Kent Cartwright, Professor and Chair, Department of English
Carol Mossman, Professor and Director, School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures

1:30 to 2:45 pm. Panel
A. The Ethics of Reading
Ulrich Recital Hall, Tawes Hall
Chair: Lillian E. Doherty (Classics)
Margaret Rice Vasileiou (English), “Ethical Interpretation and Allegorical Difference in Paradise Lost”
Sangeeta Ray (English), “Practices of Reading: Aesthetics, Ethics, Politics”
Sheila Jelen (English), “Cataclysm and Reception: Pre-Holocaust Arts in Post-Holocaust Culture”
Jeremy Metz (Comparative Literature), “Ethics of Listening/Ethics of Reading: Problems in the Reception of Holocaust Testimony”

3:00 to 4:15 pm. Panels
A. Latin (and Greek) for Americans: Thornton Wilder Reading Classical Authors
2115 Tawes Hall
Chair: Judith P. Hallett (Classics)
Erika Carlson (Classics), Megan Brodie (Classics), and Kate Pilkington (Classics),“Re-reading Greco-Roman Comedy as an American Tragic Novel: Gender, Ethnicity and Sexuality in The Woman of Andros”
Stephen Rojcewicz (Classics), Thomas Buck (Classics), and Harrison Sepulveda (Classics), “Wilder’s Debt to Sophocles in The Ides of March”
Michael Seguin (Classics), Steven Boscovitch (Classics), and Michael Lucido (Classics), “Wilder’s Classical Continuity”
Respondent: Jackson Bryer (English)
B. Novel Worlds, Global Encounters: Arcs of Reading in Twentieth-Century Fiction
3250 Tawes Hall
Chair: Rebecca Borden (English)
Richard Cross (English), "W. G. Sebald: A Reader's Story"
Peter Mallios (English), "Arcs of Darkness: African American Readings of Joseph Conrad"
Brian Richardson (English), "The Trope of the Book in the Jungle from Conrad to Pauline Melville"
Schuyler Esprit (English), "Reading England Away: Imagining the Caribbean Reader in Jamaica Kincaid's Annie John”

4:30 pm. Keynote Address and Lecture in the College of Arts and Humanities Dean’s Lecture Series
Ulrich Recital Hall
Introductions
Elizabeth Loizeaux, Associate Dean, College of Arts and Humanities
James Harris, Dean, College of Arts and Humanities
“The Future of Disciplinarity: The Case of Literature”
Louis Menand (Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor, English, Harvard University)

6:00 pm. Reception
Second Floor Lobby, Tawes Hall

9:15 to 10:45 am. Panels
A. Reading Rhetorically: A Roundtable
2115 Tawes Hall
Chair: Jane Donawerth (English)
Participants: Jeanne Fahnestock (English), Mark Hoffmann (English), Jody Lawton (English), Shirley Logan (English), Vessela Valiavitcharska (English)
B. Picturing History: Reading Images and Imaging Reading from Antiquity into the Modern, Session One
Michelle Smith Collaboratory, 4205 Art-Sociology Building
Chair: Carmen Benito-Vessels (Spanish & Portuguese)
Marjorie Venit (Art History): “Imaging the Afterlife: Bilingualism and Cultural Exchange in Graeco-Roman Egypt”
Meredith Gill (Art History): “Reading Angels: Gabriel’s Wings”
Respondent: Steven Mansbach

11:00 am to 12:15 pm. Panels
A. Reading Film from the Other Side: Cinematic Dialogs in Global Cinema
2115 Tawes Hall
Chair: Ahmad Karimi-Hakak (Persian Studies)
Silvia Carlorosi (Italian), “Reading the Other in Italian Cinema from Ferzan Ozpeteck to Mohsen Melliti”
Valérie Orlando (French), “ ‘Je est un Autre’; or Oneself as an-Other in Bedwin Hacker by Nadia El Fani”
Elizabeth Papazian (Russian), “The Poetry of Everyday Life in Soviet ‘National Cinemas’ of the 1960s”
B. Cultural Translations: Reading Across Times and Places
2123 Tawes Hall
Chair: Adele Seeff (Renaissance & Baroque Studies)
Theresa Coletti (English), “Reading Medieval Urban Drama in Post-Apartheid South Africa”
Michele Mason (Japanese) and Carol Mossman (French), “Translating “Salome” across Time, Culture, and Media”
C. Picturing History: Reading Images and Imaging Reading from Antiquity into the Modern, Session Two
Michelle Smith Collaboratory, 4205 Art-Sociology Building
Chair: Carmen Benito-Vessels (Spanish & Portuguese)
Anthony Colantuono (Art History): “The Heroic Infant: Poussin, Marino and the Poetics of Tenderness”
June Hargrove (Art History): “‘L’oeil qui écoute’: Paul Gaugin’s Conte barbares”
Respondent: Steven Mansbach

1:30 pm to 2:45 pm. Panels
A. Comparative Approaches to Race, Law, and Literature
0214 Tawes Hall
Chair: Christy DeSanctis (Law, George Washington University; English, University of Maryland)
Elizabeth DePriest (English) “Harriet Beecher Stowe and Slave Testimony: Margaret Garner in Dred”
Edlie Wong (English): “In a Foreign Tongue: Plessy v. Ferguson’s ‘Two Stories in One'”
Chris Brown (English), “The Failure of a Comparative Endeavor: Reading Law in the African American Literary Tradition”
Mary Helen Washington (English), “When Gwendolyn Brooks Wore Red”
B. Reading 9/11 Globally in Fiction and Film
2115 Tawes Hall
Chair: Lew Gleich (English)
Kim Calder (English), “Critiques of Power in J.M. Coetzee's Diary of a Bad Year”
Cameron Mozafari (English), “Haiku War: DeLillo’s Wartime Poetics in Point Omega
Linda Kauffman (English), “Sabotaging Spectacle: Don DeLillo and Alejandro Inarritu”
Respondent: Kathy-Ann Tan (English, American Studies)

3:00 pm to 4:15 pm. Panels
A. Comparative Reading with New Technologies
0214 Tawes Hall
Chair: Tanya Clement (Digital Cultures and Creativity)
Tanya Clement (Digital Cultures and Creativity), “Toward a Multi-National, Multi-Lingual, Collaborative Electronic Edition”
Jason Farman (American Studies), “Site-Specific Reading and Mobile Phone Technologies”
Marilee Lindemann (English), “‘How Public, Like a B(l)og’: Finding Dickinson in the Blogosphere”
Martha Nell Smith (English), “‘Read Me’— Emily Dickinson in the Drawing Room; or, How to Read a 19th Century Poem with 21st Century Technologies”
B. Nineteenth-Century Traversals and Translations
2115 Tawes Hall
Chair: Lauretta Clough (French & Italian)
Orrin Wang (English), “No Satisfaction: High Theory, Cultural Studies, and Byron's Don Juan”
Rebecca Ritzel (English), “Reading Shakespeare with Guiseppe Verdi”
William A. Cohen (English), “Reading the French Victorians”
Jason Rudy (English), “Tennyson at Sea, or the Poetry of Exile”
C. Reading Performance across Mediums & Genres
1105 Tawes Hall
Chair: Mirona Magearu (Comparative Literature)
Nathan Kelber (English), “Replaying Shakespeare: Remediating Early Modern Drama”
Ellen Moll (Comparative Literature), “Performance, Theater, and Physics: the Agencies of Observation”
Mirona Magearu (Comparative Literature), “Caterina Davinio’s Net-Poetry Projects: Comparative Readings to Nuances of Performance”
Douglas Kern (English), “From Script to Performance: A Comparative Study of Last Tango in Paris”

4:30 pm. Plenary Address
Ulrich Recital Hall
Introductions
Kent Cartwright, Professor and Chair, Department of English
Carol Mossman, Professor and Director, School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures
“The Scene of Reading ”
Zita Nunes, Associate Professor, English and Comparative Literature
Eric Zakim, Associate Professor, Hebrew, School of Languages, Literatures & Cultures

5:45 pm. Reception
Second Floor Lobby, Tawes Hall

Organizers & Planning Committee

Carmen Benito-Vessels, Lauretta Clough, Robert Levine, Zita Nunes, Valérie Orlando, Carla Peterson, Sangeeta Ray.

Conference Visitor Information

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