Co-organizers: Bakary Diaby (Skidmore), Lennie Hanson (New York University), and Karen Swann (Williams College)
This event is sponsored by the Keats-Shelley Association of America, with additional funds from the Byron Society of America and the Fordham Romanticism Group.
Symposium Schedule: October 28, 2023
9:15 AM - Welcome and Opening Remarks
Kate Singer, President of the K-SAA
9:30-10:45 AM - Approaching the Future
Joseph Albernaz (Columbia University): "Below from Romanticism: Future Pasts."
Kristina Huang (U of Wisconsin Madison): "Black Life Unbound in the 18th Century."
Diana Little (Princeton U): “Romantic Rocks, Indigenous Traces.”
11:00 AM -12:15 PM - A conversation with Denise Ferreira da Silva, author of A Global Idea of Race and Unpayable Debt
Denise Ferreira da Silva (NYU)
Interlocutor: Samiha Khalil (UC Irvine)
12:15-2:00 PM - Lunch
2:00-3:15 PM - Collaborating on the Future
A conversation with the editors of The Cambridge Companion to Romanticism and World Literature, the Handbook to Global Literature and Culture in the Romantic Era (Routledge), and The Cambridge Companion to Romanticism and Race
Emily Sun (Barnard College), Arif Camoglu (NYU Shanghai), Omar Miranda (University of San Francisco), Gaura Narayan (SUNY Purchase), Kate Singer (Mt Holyoke College), and Eugenia Zuroski (McMaster University)
3:30-4:45 PM - Concurrent Workshops
We hope these workshops will generate ideas about how the organization might “fund structures to begin to actuate the transmission of culture and critical thought to current and future diverse readers.”
Workshop 1: Classes
Moderated by Karen Swann (Williams College)
What are the challenges and possibilities presented by teaching a more capaciously-imagined Romanticism? How can we extend our attention beyond the “Big Six”; beyond British and European literatures; beyond the dates historically delimiting the period? How do we accomplish this as our sense of “the classroom” shifts in response to the changing demographics and interests of today’s college students? How might we most effectively embrace the importance and potential of teaching in other spaces, including high schools, prisons, and reading groups that draw non-academic readers (as, for example, in prison-abolition reading groups that include 18th and 19th century texts)?
We are looking for volunteers willing to share syllabi, pedagogical strategies, and/or reading lists that take up this challenge. Please contact Karen Swann (kswann@williams.edu) if you have designed a course or participated in a reading group that could serve as a jumping-off point for discussion. We would be grateful for your contribution to our workshop!
Workshop 2: Commons (Hybrid session)
Moderated by Bakary Diaby (Skidmore College)
This workshop will build on K-SAA’s current public outreach initiative for the 2023-4 academic year, titled "Commonplacing." The project intends to be a resource for teachers and students of all grades levels and for any interested members of the public. The workshop will also reflect on a Commonplacing Pedagogy Workshop (more information forthcoming).
We hope to use this workshop as a general space to conceive of other projects that can engage the public, as well as other kinds of resources we should make available to further the association’s goals. How can we create a more inclusive community around the study and appreciation of Keats, the Shelleys, their circles, and their contexts? How might we, in broadening our understanding of the past, expand access to a more diverse array of readers, and preserve Romantic studies for the future?
For more, please see https://www.k-saa.org/commonplacing-home
N.B. Symposium participants will receive a Zoom link for this workshop before the event via the email they use for registration.
Workshop 3: Publics
Moderated by Lennie Hanson
This session will be led by volunteer organizers from the Interference Archive, an open access archive that houses materials at the intersection of social movements and cultural production. Making posters, flyers, publications, zines, books, T-shirts and buttons, moving images, and audio recordings available to the public and to activists, the Interference Archive operates on a collaborative basis and as “an archive from below.”
Inspired by the materials and the collective orientation of the Interference Archive, this workshop will encourage participants to expand our understanding of what counts as an archive, and to open up questions about the forms of cultural production relevant to literary studies. What ways might an open-access archive inspire new practices in our classrooms? How might contemporary ephemera accessed or produced by students in their ordinary lives be connected to the histories and literatures we teach?
4:45-5:15 PM - Collective brainstorming session on “Envisioning Romantic Futures”
Workshop participants will offer their ideas, with the hope of developing seed projects for the new K-SAA Romantic Futures grants.
5:15-6:15 PM - Wine and cheese reception, sponsored by the Byron Society of America