Literature News
WAMC’s On the Road Broadcasts Live from Arendt Center’s Annual Conference “JOY”
Opening the show, Donahue will speak with Bard President Leon Botstein and Academic Director of the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and the Humanities at Bard College Roger Berkowitz.
Ingrid Becker Named a Member of the Institute for Advanced Study
Becker will work on a new research project about the rise of the questionnaire—a sociological technology and ubiquitous mass cultural form—in relation to the shifting status of the question in post-1945 Anglo-American poetry.
Robert Kelly and Charlotte Mandell ’90 Write About Pierre Joris ’69 for the Poetry Foundation
“He was never jealous of anybody,” said Mandell. “He was always happy for other people's success.”
Upcoming Events
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2/24Tuesday5:00 pm EST/GMT-5
Preston Theater
Korean Science Fiction and the Boundaries of the Imaginable
Dr. Sangkeun Yoo, (Assistant Professor at Marist University)
Tuesday, February 24, 2026This lecture examines the overlooked history of Korean science fiction and what it reveals about the political limits of imagination. Tracing the genre from early twentieth-century translations of Jules Verne and H. G. Wells to contemporary popular Korean film, television, and popular media such as K-pop Demon Hunters, the talk challenges Western-centered narratives of science fiction’s origins.
5:00 pm EST/GMT-5
Preston Theater
Focusing on Korea’s experience of colonialism, Cold War geopolitics, and national division, the lecture argues that science fiction is a privileged site for understanding not only what futures were imagined, but what futures remained impossible to imagine. By situating Korean science fiction within a global framework, the talk rethinks science fiction as a politically embedded, transnational genre rather than a purely Western one.
Contact: Soonyoung Lee
E-mail: [email protected]
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3/03Tuesday5:30 pm EST/GMT-5
Stevenson Library - 1st Floor
Archive as Activation:
Rediscovering Mina LoyKarla Kelsey, Professor of English and Creative Writing, Susquehanna University
Tuesday, March 3, 2026Recovering women writers from literary obscurity is both an archival and a feminist act. Join poet and scholar Karla Kelsey for a reading exploring the revolutionary work of modernist writer and artist Mina Loy (1882-1966), followed by a conversation with Alys Moody. As editor of Lost Writings: Two Novels by Mina Loy and author of the poet's novel Transcendental Factory: For Mina Loy, Kelsey uncovers multiple ways fragmented archives can activate new creative possibility. This event offers participants insight into the editorial process, poetic homage, and the generative power of lost texts.
5:30 pm EST/GMT-5
Stevenson Library - 1st Floor
Contact: Alys Moody
E-mail: [email protected]
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3/10Tuesday5:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
Olin Humanities, Room 205
Poetry as Praxis? Building Cabins and Living in Ruins with Jean-Marie Gleize
With André Pettman, Assistant Professor in French Studies at the University of Arizona
Tuesday, March 10, 2026Can poetry be political practice? This talk attends to this question through examination of the work of contemporary French poet Jean-Marie Gleize. Throughout his recent poetry, Gleize draws on a recurrent motif, the cabin, connecting it with both contemporary French political struggles and theoretical notions of community. This talk will demonstrate how his sustained engagement with the cabin ultimately opens onto a conception of a radical form of community that is autonomous from the French state. Close formal readings reveal how Gleize is less concerned about what poetry is and more about what poetry does, treating it as a means of confronting the myriad crises and ruinous logics afflicting our contemporary world, from capitalist expansion to ecological devastation. Our discussion of Gleize’s work will culminate with consideration of how his poetry is conceived as a form of anti-institutional and anti-capitalist political practice that cultivates new modes of inhabiting the earth in its vulnerability.
5:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
Olin Humanities, Room 205
André Pettman is Assistant Professor in French Studies at the University of Arizona, in Tucson, where he teaches contemporary French & Francophone literature. His current research examines twenty-first-century French literature as a site of radical political imagination.
Contact: Éric Trudel
E-mail: [email protected]
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4/22Wednesday5:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Stevenson Library
Literature Open House
Wednesday, April 22, 2026
5:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
Stevenson Library
Please join us for the Literature Program's Spring Open House. The Open House will be an opportunity to meet Literature faculty, hear about next semester's courses, talk with Literature seniors and other students about their experiences, and celebrate the spring semester.
Everyone, whether or not you've already taken a course in Literature, is welcome!
Contact: Marisa Libbon
E-mail: [email protected]