International Whitman Week and Symposium 2014: "Whitman Across Genres"
University of Bamberg
July 21 - 26, 2014
Every year the Transatlantic Walt Whitman Association organizes the International Walt Whitman Week. The week consists of a five-day credit-bearing seminar, taught by international specialists and open to students from all over the world, and a two-day research symposium on various aspects of Whitman's work.
From July 21 - 26, 2014, the 7th International Walt Whitman Week took place at the University of Bamberg, Germany. From Monday through Friday, 34 students and seven instructors from nine countries came together for daily lectures, plenary discussions and small group seminars on Whitman's work, and two translation workshops. During a concluding 2-day research symposium on "Whitman Across Genres", 18 scholarly presentations explored Whitman’s genre-defying art and his lasting impact on international fringe poetry and fiction, architecture and music, sociology and politics.
Conference Program
Session I: Whitman’s All-Fusing, Genre-Defying Art
- Thoren Opitz, "By All Necessary Genres: Whitman Writing the 'Beginning of a Great Career' in 1856"
- Ondrej Skovajsa, "The Written Voice of Leaves (1855)"
- Reinier van Ramshorst, "Alexis de Tocqueville and Walt Whitman: Between Prophecy and Influence"
Session II: Neglected Dimensions of Whitman: His Fiction, Journalism, and Marginalia
- Stephanie Blalock, "'My stories, I believe, have been pretty popular': The Reprinting of Walt Whitman’s Short Fiction in the U.S. and Abroad"
- Karen Karbiener, "Reconsidering Whitman’s Desk at the Brooklyn Daily Times"
- Matt Cohen, "The Restless Marge: Textual Mobility in Whitman’s Annotations"
Session III: Tracking Whitman Across Cultures
- Ann Kaiser, "Whitman in Catalan and in Catalunya: Architects Cebrià de Montoliu’s Translation of & Critical Work on Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass"
- Patricia Anzini, "Fertilizing Dark Zones: Whitman and Brazilian Fringe Poetry"
- Maria Clara Paro, "'Democratic Vistas' and 'Camerado Whitman' by Gilbert Freyre: The Construction of Whitman as a Political Poet in Brazil"
Session IV: Whitman in Fiction, Music, and Sociology
- Timothy Robbins, "Leaves of Grass and 'Social Control': On Literary Approaches to Sociology"
- Maria Aparecide de Oliveira, "Walt Whitman Across Cultures: Virginia Woolf on Whitman"
- M. H. van Spaandonk, "'Open Doors of Time! Open Hospital Doors!': War Trauma and Reconciliation in Walt Whitman’s Drum-Taps and Lan Cao’s Monkey Bridge"
Session V: Rethinking Whitman’s Late Prose, Lectures, and Appearances in Documentaries
- Bojana Aćamović, "Look for Him Under Your Bootsoles…or in his Prose"
- Anthony Cohen, "'The Measureless Crudity of the States:' Whitman’s Vision of American Literary and Imperial Production"
- Nicole Gray, "'The Divine Power to Speak Words': Performance, Genre, and Revision in Walt Whitman’s Lincoln Lectures"
- Kevin McMullen, "Who Watches This, Watches a Man: Walt Whitman in Educational Films"
Click here(487.5 KB, 2 Seiten) for a detailed schedule of the conference.
Further Information and Links
For photos and a short student report on the 7th International Whitman Week 2014 (Bamberg University, Germany) and more photos, please clicke here.
For photos and a short participant report on the 6th International Walt Whitman Week 2013 (Northwestern University Chicago, USA) please click here.
For the programs of all previous Walt Whitman Weeks, please click here.
