Distinguished Voices in Literature — Prior Events
Spring 2024
Elizabeth Weybright
Van Burd Memorial Lecture: “Jane’s Ear: Auditory Subjectivity in Charlotte Brontë’s Fiction”
Friday, March 1, 2024
Old Main Colloquium (220)
4:30 p.m.
In this talk, I examine Charlotte Brontë’s depiction of her heroine in Jane Eyre as an active listener during moments of significant psychological growth. I find that Brontë approaches aurality as a mode of encounter that is both cerebral and profoundly embodied, making her fiction an important and underappreciated contribution to Victorian discourses around acoustics and the science of sound.
Dr. Elizabeth Weybright received a PhD in English from the Graduate Center, CUNY, where her research won an Alumni and Faculty Prize for Most Distinguished Dissertation of the Year in 2022. Her ongoing book project positions women writers as key interlocutors in discourses surrounding acoustic science and musical aesthetics during the long nineteenth century. She is also currently at work on a project examining amateur music culture in the British empire with particular interest in the musical lives of colonial subjects during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Dr. Weybright’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in The European Romantic Review, Romantic Circles Praxis, The Rambling, and a volume on Nineteenth-Century Literature in Transition: The 1800's, forthcoming from Cambridge University Press. She teaches in the English Department and First-Year Experience program at Barnard College.
Hai-Dang Phan
Wednesday, April 24, 5 pm
Old Main 220
Poet, translator, and essayist Hai-Dang Phan was born in Vietnam and raised in Wisconsin. He is the author of the poetry collection Reenactments (Sarabande, 2019) and the translator of Phan Nhiên Hạo’s selected volume of poems, Paper Bells (The Song Cave, 2020). His writing has appeared in numerous publications, including Best American Poetry 2016, New England Review, The New Yorker, Poetry, Asymptote, Bennington Review, and The Baffler. Phan is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and the American Literary Translators Association. He earned a Ph.D. in literary studies from the University of Wisconsin and an M.F.A. in creative writing from the University of Florida. Phan currently teaches creative writing, multi-ethnic American literatures, and environmental writing at Grinnell College. An avid birdwatcher, he is currently working on a book of literary nonfiction called Operation Laughingthrush, about the entangled life histories of humans and birds, the conservation ethic in Vietnam, and a Vietnamese American writer’s search for belonging. He lives in Iowa City.
Fall 2023
Chelsea Mikael Frazier
“Black Feminist Ecology: Origins”
Wednesday, October 11, 2023
Old Main Colloquium (220)
4:30 p.m.
The prevailing disciplinary and theoretical frameworks for comprehending black feminist subjectivity and its integral relationship to revered planetary elements, forces, and spaces are impoverished. We can address this impoverishment by turning to blackfem writers, artists, and activists to configure an alternative understanding of the social, political, and physical worlds we currently inhabit. By engaging narrative and visual culture, Dr. Chelsea Frazier articulates Black Feminist Ecology--a conceptual framework that seeks to move beyond the limited correctives made available through the conventions of Western theories and its attendant disciplinary divisions.
Chelsea Mikael Frazier, PhD is a Black feminist ecocritic—writing, researching, and teaching at the intersection of Black feminist theory and environmental thought. Across a diverse array of platforms, all of Dr. Frazier’s work is geared toward creating paths toward harmonial Worlds that no longer rely on the harm of Black people, the destruction of our environment, or the exploitation of femininity to keep spinning. As an award-winning interdisciplinary researcher, Dr. Frazier's scholarship spans the fields of Black feminist literature and theory, visual culture, ecocriticism and the broader environmental humanities, political theory, science and technology studies, and Afrofuturism. Dr. Frazier is currently at work on her first book manuscript which is a culmination of a years-long ecocritical investigation of contemporary Black women artists, writers, and activists. In her analyses, she illuminates the cultural histories and creative contributions of Black women who’ve carved-out a rich and transformative practice of ecological ethics alternative to the “environmentalisms” that are readily legible in Western society.
Raul Palma
Tuesday, November 7, 2023
Brockway Hall, Jacobus Lounge
3 p.m.
Raul Palma is the author of the novel, A Haunting in Hialeah Gardens. His short story collection In This World of Ultraviolet Light won the 2021 Don Belton Prize. His writing has appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, The Greensboro Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and elsewhere. He teaches fiction at Ithaca College, where he is the associate dean of faculty in the School of Humanities and Sciences.
Spring 2023
Benjamin Garcia
Wednesday, March 1, 2023
5 p.m.
Corey Union Fireplace Lounge, Room 219
A 2023 NEA Fellow in poetry, Benjamin Garcia’s first collection, Thrown in the Throat, won the National Poetry Series and the Eugene Paul Nassar Poetry Prize, in addition to being a finalist for the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. He works as a sexual health and harm reduction educator in New York’s Finger Lakes region, where he received the Jill Gonzalez Health Educator Award recognizing contributions to HIV treatment and prevention. A CantoMundo and Lambda Literary fellow, he serves as core faculty at Alma College’s low-residency MFA program. His poems and essays have recently appeared or are forthcoming in: AGNI, American Poetry Review, Indiana Review, Kenyon Review, and New England Review. His video poem “Ode to the Peacock” is available for viewing at the Broad Museum’s website as part of El Poder de la Poesia: Latinx Voices in Response to HIV/ AIDS.
Barrett Bowlin
Wednesday, April 12, 2023
5:00 p.m.
Dowd Art Gallery, Dowd Fine Arts Center, Room 106
Barrett Bowlin is the author of the short story collection, Ghosts Caught on Film (Bridge Eight Press). His essays and short fiction can be found in places like Ninth Letter, Barrelhouse, Salt Hill, Waxwing, Bayou, and Hoxie Gorge Review. Links to his work online can be found at barrettbowlin.com.
Fall 2022
Gina Nutt
Thursday, November 3, 2022
5 p.m.
Dowd Gallery, Dowd Fine Arts Center, Room 106
Gina Nutt is the author of the essay collection Night Rooms (Two Dollar Radio). She earned her MFA from Syracuse University. Her writing has appeared in Denver Quarterly, Forever Mag, Joyland, Ninth Letter, and elsewhere. She lives in Ithaca, New York.
Asilia Franklin-Phipps
Van Burd Memorial Lecture: "Literacy at the End of the World"
Wednesday, November 30, 2022
4:00 p.m.
Fireplace Lounge, Corey Union
Dr. Asilia Franklin-Phipps is an assistant professor in the Department of Teaching and Learning at SUNY New Paltz. She completed her PhD in 2017 at the University of Oregon in Critical Sociocultural Studies in Education. Drawing on a capacious range of disciplinary practices (including sociology of education, critical theory, literary studies, and writing studies), Franklin-Phipps’s work explores race, visual culture, affect and implications on pedagogy and education. Franklin-Phipps’s work has appeared in Cultural Studies <-->Critical Methodologies, Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, Girlhood Studies, International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education and Educational Philosophy and Theory. In addition to her scholarly work, Franklin-Phipps also conducts workshops, gives public talks, and writes about pedagogy for a broad audience.
Spring 2022
Donna Masini
Wednesday, April 20, 2022
5 p.m.
Sperry Center, Mary L. Hobson ’61 Lecture Hall, Room 104
Donna Masini is the author of three books of poems-4:30 Movie (W.W. Norton and Co., 2018, paper, 2020)), Turning to Fiction (Norton, 2004), That Kind of Danger (Beacon Press, 1994)--and a novel, About Yvonne (Norton,1998). Her work has appeared in journals and anthologies including Poetry, Ploughshares, American Poetry Review, Paris Review, Brooklyn Poets, Best American Poetry 2015. A recipient of National Endowment for the Arts and New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowships, a Pushcart Prize, as well as fellowship residencies at Civitella Ranieri, Bogliasco and Yaddo, she is a Professor of English/Creative Writing at Hunter College, CUNY. She lives in New York City.
Ann Kirschner
Wednesday, April 27, 2022
7 p.m.
Sperry Center, Room 106
Ann Kirschner is the author of Sala's Gift and Lady at the OK Corral and a contributor to Forbes, where she writes about innovation in media, technology, and education. She is President of Comma Communications and University Professor at the City University of New York. A former senior executive of five start-ups including NFL.com, she serves on the board of directors of several companies and nonprofit organizations, including the Movado Group (MOV), Noodle, Strategic Cyber Ventures, Footsteps, NYC First, and the Paul and Daisy Soros Foundation.
Fall 2022
Jordan S. Carroll
Van Burd Memorial Lecture: "Theory of the Obscene"
Thursday, November 4, 2021
4:30 p.m.
Jordan S. Carroll is the author of Reading the Obscene: Transgressive Editors and the Class Politics of U.S. Literature (Stanford UP, 2021).
Cheryl Strayed
Tuesday, November 16, 2021
5 p.m.
Cheryl Strayed is the author of Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail, and Tiny Beautiful Things.
Spring 2021
Ama Bemma Adwetewa-Badu
Van Burd Memorial Lecture: "The Paradox of Anthologizing the Globe: Transnationality, Translation, and the Contact Zone of Poetry"
Wednesday, March 17th at 5 p.m.
Ama Bemma Adwetewa-Badu is a doctoral candidate in the Literatures in English Department at Cornell University.
Distinguished Voices in Conversation: Hoxie Gorge Review
Chelsea Bunn, Brooke Champagne, Ashley M. Jones, and Silas Hansen
Thursday, April 1, 2021 at 6 p.m.
Poets and authors from Hoxie Gorge Review offer readings of their own work and engage in discussions of craft, process, and writing in times of crisis and uncertainty.
Myriam Gurba
photo by Geoff Cordner
Tuesday, May 4, 2021, 6:00 p.m.
Myriam Gurba is the author of Mean, a New York Times editors’ choice.
Fall 2019
Dr. Roya Biggie
Van Burd Memorial Lecture
Dr. Roya Biggie
"Race, Empire, and Plantlife on the Early Modern Stage"
Friday, Oct. 4, 2019 at 4 p.m.
Sperry Center, Room 106
Roya Biggie is Assistant Professor of English at Knox College in Galesburg, IL. Her teaching and research interests include early modern drama, botanical and medical texts, and travel narratives. Her work has appeared in Early Theatre, Lesser Living Creatures of the Renaissance, and Early Modern Literary Studies (forthcoming). Her book project, Ecology of the Passions in Early Modern Tragedies, uses affect theory and ecocriticism to analyze early modern conceptions of sympathy.
Emily Fridlund
Reading by author Emily Fridlund
Monday, Nov. 18, 2019 at 5:00 P.M.
Brockway Hall, Jacobus Lounge
Emily Fridlund grew up in Minnesota. Her first novel, History of Wolves, was a finalist for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction, the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction, and the International Dublin Literary Award. It was awarded the American Academy of Arts and Letters Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction and the Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award. Fridlund’s debut collection of stories, Catapult, won the Mary McCarthy Prize. Her fiction has appeared in a variety of journals, including Boston Review, ZYZZYVA, New Orleans Review, Sou’wester, New Delta Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, and Southwest Review. She currently teaches writing at Cornell University.
Spring 2019
Sapphire
Reading by author Sapphire
Thursday, April 4, 2019, 5:00pm
Brockway Hall Jacobus Lounge
Sapphire is the author of two bestselling novels, Push and The Kid. Push was adapted into the Academy Award-winning major motion film Precious, which received the Academy Award for Best Screenplay and Best Supporting Actress. Sapphire is also the author of two collections of poetry: American Dreams, and Black Wings & Blind Angels. Her work has been translated into thirteen languages and has been adapted for stage in the United States and Europe. Her poetry, fiction, and essays have appeared in The Black Scholar, The New York Times Magazine, The New York Times Book Review, The Teacher’s Voice, The New Yorker, Spin, and Bomb.
Dr. Frances Botkin
Lecture by Dr. Frances Botkin
Friday, April 26, 2019, 5:00pm
Sperry Center Room 106
Dr. Botkin is the author of Thieving Three Fingered Jack: TransAtlantic Tales of a Jamaican Outlaw, 1780-2015. She was trained in British Romanticism at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Currently she works in TransAtlantic Studies, specifically exploring the dynamics among self-emancipated blacks and the colonial police state in Jamaica. As a result, her approach to teaching British Romanticism has acquired a global register. While completing her book about the escaped slave rebel, Three-Fingered Jack, she started work on a collection of essays, From the Abeng to the Book: Studies in Matronage and Indigeneity. This collection has emerged out of her work with the Maroons of Jamaica and Suriname in the organization of the Charles Town International Conference on Maroons and Indigenous People (from 2009-the present). She teaches at Towson University.
Fall 2018
Elissa Washuta
Reading by author Elissa Washuta
Wednesday, October 17, 2018, 5:30pm
Brockway Hall Jacobus Lounge
Elissa Washuta is a member of the Cowlitz Indian Tribe and a writer of personal essays and memoir. She is the author of two books, Starvation Mode and My Body Is a Book of Rules, named a finalist for the Washington State Book Award. With Theresa Warburton, she is co-editor of the anthology Exquisite Vessel: Shapes of Native Nonfiction, forthcoming from University of Washington Press. She has received fellowships and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, Artist Trust, 4Culture, Potlatch Fund, and Hugo House. Elissa is an assistant professor of English at the Ohio State University.
Chen Chen
Reading by Poet Chen Chen
Tuesday, October 30, 2018, 5:00pm
Brockway Hall Jacobus Lounge
Chen Chen is the author of When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities, which was longlisted for the National Book Award and won the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize, the GLCA New Writers Award, and the Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry. The collection was also a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry and named one of the best of 2017 by The Brooklyn Rail, Entropy, Library Journal, and others. His work has appeared in many publications, including Poetry, Tin House, Poem-a-Day, The Best American Poetry, Bettering American Poetry, and The Best American Nonrequired Reading. Chen earned his MFA from Syracuse University and is pursuing a PhD in English and Creative Writing as an off-site Texas Tech University student. He lives in frequently snowy Rochester, NY with his partner, Jeff Gilbert and their pug dog, Mr. Rupert Giles. Chen is the 2018-2020 Jacob Ziskind Poet-in-Residence at Brandeis University.
John Havard
Van Burd Memorial Lecture by Dr. John Havard
Wednesday, November 7, 2018, 5:00pm
Brockway Hall Jacobus Lounge
John Havard is the author of Disaffected Parties: Political Estrangement and the Making of English Literature, 1760–1830, forthcoming next year from Oxford University Press. He studied in the U.K., at the University of Virginia, and at the University of Chicago where he received his Ph.D. in 2013. He is author of articles in ELH, Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation, The Nineteenth Century and Contemporary Literature on writers including Laurence Sterne, Mary Shelley, and Edward St. Aubyn. His current work includes a book on literary and political rhetoric about the end of the world in the writings of Byron and Mary Shelley and continuing work on political disaffection and cynicism.
Spring 2018
Laurie Gries
“Swastika Monitoring: Developing Digital Research Tools to Track Visual Rhetorics of Hate”
Monday, March 26, 2018, 5:00pm
Brockway Hall Jacobus Lounge
Laurie Gries (PhD, Syracuse University) is an assistant professor at the University of Colorado Boulder. Her research is invested in visual rhetoric, circulation studies, new materialism, and the digital humanities. She is particularly interested in how images circulate, transform, and contribute to collective life and is currently developing digital research methods and digital visualization techniques to support such research. In addition to acting as the managing editor of enculturation: A Journal of Rhetoric, Writing, and Culture, she is author of Still Life with Rhetoric: A New Materialist Approach for Visual Rhetorics, which won the 2016 CCCC Research Impact Award and the 2016 CCCC Advancement of Knowledge Award, and the forthcoming co-edited collection Circulation, Writing, and Rhetoric.
Christine Kitano
Reading by Poet Christine Kitano
Thursday, April 5, 2018, 5:00pm
Brockway Hall Jacobus Lounge
Christine Kitano is the author of the poetry collections Sky Country (BOA Editions, 2017) and Birds of Paradise (Lynx House Press, 2011). Recent work is published in Portland Review, Miramar, and Wildness. She teaches at Ithaca College and the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.
Bob Proehl
Reading by Author Bob Proehl
Wednesday, April 25, 2018, 5:00pm
Corey Union Exhibition Lounge
Bob Proehl is the author of the novel A Hundred Thousand Worlds (Penguin). He grew up in Buffalo, New York, where his local comics shop was Queen City Bookstore. He has worked as a bookseller and programming director for Buffalo Street Books, a DJ, a record store owner, and a bartender. He was a 2012 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow in Fiction and a 2013 resident at the Saltonstall Arts Colony. He has written for the 33⅓ book series and worked as a columnist and reviewer for the arts and culture site PopMatters.com. Proehl currently lives in Ithaca, New York, with his wife, stepson, and daughter.
