ANNOUNCEMENTS

Whitman in Brooklyn Hall of Fame?

The Brooklyn Hall of Fame will be inducting its first five honorees in March of 2009.  Those initial five inductees will be chosen from a list of fifteen distinguished Brooklynites, including Whitman, Mae West, Jackie Robinson, Norman Mailer, Arthur Miller, and Harry Houdini.  The Hall of Fame is conducting an online vote to help determine the five inductees.  As of this writing, Whitman is in the lead, trailed closely by Robinson, Mailer, and Miller.  Anyone can vote at http://www.brooklynhall.blogspot.com/.

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The Walt Whitman Birthplace Needs Your Support!

The Walt Whitman Birthplace in Huntington, Long Island is a New York Historic Site dedicated to educating the public on Whitman’s life and times and honoring his contribution to America’s cultural heritage.  Visitors may tour the house in which Whitman spent his first four years, visit the Interpretive Center, and take part in numerous events and activities that celebrate Whitman’s literary legacy.

As a small non-profit organization, the Walt Whitman Birthplace Association is currently feeling the impact of these challenging economic times.  In spite of stringent efforts to cut costs and the efforts to initiate new fundraising events, WWBA is on the edge of its ability to meet expenses. Current projections indicate that sometime in the spring of 2009, the organization may be unable to continue their present operation.  State and local grand cutbacks have resulted in a $55,000 shortfall in its $200,000 budget.

Public and private support is essential in keeping the Birthplace open and its programs active.  You can help in several ways:  by becoming a Member of the Walt Whitman Birthplace Association, making a donation (in-kind goods and services are gratefully accepted), or simply by visiting and inviting others to do the same.  Please go to our website to learn more about all of these options: www.waltwhitman.org.

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INTERNATIONAL WHITMAN WEEK 2009 - SEMINAR AND SYMPOSIUM

The Transatlantic Walt Whitman Association (TWWA), founded in Paris in 2007, invites students, researchers, and Whitman enthusiasts to participate in its second Whitman Week, consisting of a seminar for advanced students interested in Whitman and Whitman’s poetry, and a symposium bringing together international scholars and graduate students. The seminar and the symposium are co-sponsored by the TWWA, the Université François-Rabelais, the Région Centre, the Conseil Général d’Indre-et-Loire, and the Mairie de Tours.

International Whitman Seminar: Walt Whitman’s Poetry in the Twenty-first Century

Université François-Rabelais, June 8-12, 2009

Walt Whitman’s poetry, written in the nineteenth century, continues to have a strong impact on literatures and cultures worldwide. Every year new editions of Whitman’s work are published in a variety of languages; ever new poets “reply” to him in their poetry; his poems are set to music and are quoted in films; he is invoked in the discussion of political and cultural issues as well as of gender and sexuality; and he continues to be a huge presence in college and university curricula around the world.

In order to respond adequately to this international phenomenon The Transatlantic Walt Whitman Association sponsors a series of International Whitman Seminars, where students from different countries come together for intensive, credit-bearing classes taught by Whitman specialists from different countries.

The first seminar was held in Dortmund, Germany, in June 2008. The second will take place in Tours during the week of June 8-14, 2009. In class, students will focus on some of Whitman’s major poems and will have an opportunity to share their readings of these poems and discuss their international significance in the twenty-first century. In addition, there will be special presentations on the reception of Whitman in various countries and languages as well as other topics. This year’s instructors will be Marina Camboni, Università di Macerata, author of Utopia in the Present Tense: Walt Whitman and the Language of the New World, Ed Folsom, University of Iowa, editor of the Walt Whitman Quarterly Review and co-founder and editor of the Walt Whitman Archive, Jay Grossman, Northwestern University, author of Reconstituting the American Renaissance: Emerson, Whitman, and the Politics of Representation, and M. Wynn Thomas, University of Wales Swansea, author of The Lunar Light of Whitman’s Poetry. Students will also participate in the symposium held at the end of the week, featuring Whitman scholars from various countries.

Credits will be issued by the Université François-Rabelais. International visiting students will live with their French counterparts, thus keeping expenses as low as possible and creating opportunities for a meaningful intercultural dialogue. In addition to the seminar and symposium, students will be shown around the Loire Valley, which boasts the world’s largest concentration of Renaissance chateaux.

Application: 15 non-French international students will be accepted to the Week. Applications should include a curriculum-vitae, a one-page statement of interest in the Week, and a short letter of support by an instructor who knows the applicant. Applications should be sent to eric.athenot@orange.fr by April 3 at the latest.

International Whitman Symposium: “Endlessly Rocking.”

Université François-Rabelais, June 12-14, 2009

This year’s symposium will be devoted to “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking,” written by Whitman exactly 150 years ago and first published under the title “A Child’s Reminiscence” in the New-York Saturday Press on December 24, 1859. In the 1881 edition of Leaves of Grass, it came to occupy its present position  as the first poem of the “Sea-Drifts” cluster. This poem evokes a remarkable merging of life and death, loss and poetic inspiration, universal laws and human categories.

Papers are invited to cover a wide range of approaches to the poem, including the position this poem occupies in Whitman’s printed work and poetics, how it documents the poet’s practice of endlessly rewriting, and its debt to and departure from British Romanticism. Papers focusing on international responses to this poem, including translations into other languages, are also strongly encouraged.

Abstracts should be sent to Betsy Erkkila, Northwestern University (erkkila@northwestern.edu), and Marta Skwara, Uniwersytet Szczecinski (martaskw@univ.szczecin.pl) by March 15, 2009.

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Seminar on “Interpreting the Shifting Texts of Dickinson and/or Whitman”

The fourteenth annual conference of the Association of Literary Scholars & Critics (ALSC) will be held October 25, 2008, at the Sheraton Society Hill Hotel in Philadelphia. Don Share (Poetry Magazine) is convening a seminar on “Interpreting the Shifting Texts of Dickinson and/or Whitman.” Otherwise so different, Dickinson and Whitman have in common the fact that their textual histories are complicated. Editorial controversies create occasions for interpretation. In Dickinson’s case, there are the variant versions, the unfinished poems, the poems embedded in letters and so altered to suit the recipient, versions blurring the distinction between verse and prose, the idiosyncratic spelling and punctuation, and the fact that she did not oversee her publication. In Whitman there is the shifting ground of six editions of Leaves of Grass, all supervised by the author, and involving revisions, omissions, innovations of format (such as tables of contents and the grouping of poems into sections), and the adding and dropping of titles.

What interpretive insights can be gleaned from these textual complications, in the case of either poet or (where possible) both? Does it mean anything about American poetry that the texts of its two foundational poets are so unstable? What happens in the classroom when you make your students aware of the textual controversies (or do you have reasons for concealing them)? Do the conventions of nineteenth century print culture cast light on interpretation?

Proposals for the seminar are invited. Please send half-page abstracts or short papers (2-4 pages) as Word attachments to alsc@bu.edu. Submission deadline is Friday, September 12, 2008. All perspectives are welcome; we hope to include participants who have lots of experience in editing these poets as well as participants who have none. More information on the conference is available at http://www.bu.edu/literary/conferences/index.html.

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PBS "American Experience" Whitman Film Now on the Web

The two-hour Walt Whitman film telecast nationally on April 14, 2008, on the PBS "American Experience" series, is now available for viewing on the Web. The PBS "American Experience" website also has information about Whitman, excerpts of interviews with the various scholars and writers who appear in the program, including Betsy Erkkila, Ed Folsom, Allan Gurganus, Karen Karbiener, Kenneth Price, and David Reynolds. Also appearing in the film are poets Billy Collins, Martín Espada, and Yusef Komunyakaa. J. K. Simmons narrates the film, and Chris Cooper is the voice of Walt Whitman. The film was directed and written by Mark Zwonitzer and produced by Patrick Long and Jamila Wignot. A DVD of the film is available for purchase on the website for $24.99. 

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NeMLA Panel on Melville and Whitman

“Barbaric Bards: The Epic Voices of Melville and Whitman” is a panel scheduled for NeMLA’s 40th Anniversary Conference, February 26-March 3, 2009, at the Hyatt Regency in Boston, Massachusetts. 250-word proposals for papers are invited and should be sent to Zach Hutchins, The University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, at: moremun(at)yahoo.com. 

Works by Herman Melville and Walt Whitman dominate the literary landscape of the United States in the nineteenth century, but little or no critical work has been done tracing the thematic and textual linkages between these two authors. This lacuna persists despite the fact that we know Whitman read and admired Melville’s novels before he had even begun to conceptualize Leaves of Grass. As a reporter, Whitman reviewed Typee and Omoo, and textual parallels suggest that he also read Moby-Dick and Mardi. Rather than explore these potentially fruitful connections between Whitman and Melville, however, the limited critical work that has tenuously linked the two focuses on their respective portrayals of the Civil War as an obvious point of common interest. Presumably, the formal structure of Melville’s poetry and the free verse for which Whitman is famous differ so significantly that scholars have not been able to imagine any connection between the two without significant overlap in content. Instead of continuing to compare their respective careers as poets, this panel will ask participants to connect Melville’s prose with Whitman’s poetry by answering questions such as: In what ways do Melville’s novels and Whitman’s poetry attempt to transcend genre? How does Melville’s radically democratic (Pierre) and demonstrably metaphysical (Moby-Dick) prose perform the same cultural work as Whitman’s free verse? What specific textual and thematic links suggest Whitman’s indebtedness to Melville? That volumes connecting Melville to John Milton and Frederick Douglass or Whitman to William Wordsworth and Emily Dickinson have recently been published without a remotely equivalent consideration of the ways in which these two icons of American literature may have affected one another’s art or treated similar issues seems a grievous critical oversight. It is difficult to believe that the subsequent, rather sudden emergence of Whitman’s enormous “barbaric yawp” does not owe something to Melville’s earlier, “mortal, barbaric smack of the lip,” and this panel will provide a launching point for more extensive investigations into the intertextual relationship of nineteenth-century America’s two most prolific authors. Papers investigating specific connections between Melville’s early novels (Typee, Omoo, Mardi, Redburn, White-Jacket, Moby-Dick, and Pierre) and Whitman’s Leaves of Grass will be given preference.

The deadline for proposals is September 1, 2008; proposals should include your name and affiliation, your email address, your telephone number, and any A/V requirements (for which there will be a $10 handling fee). The complete Call for Papers for the 2009 Convention will be posted in June at the NeMLA website . Interested participants may submit abstracts to more than one NeMLA panel; however panelists can only present one paper. Convention participants may present a paper at a panel or seminar and also present at a creative session or participate in a roundtable.

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WHITMAN PANEL AT MIDWEST MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION MEETING

Luke Mancuso (St. John’s University) has organized a panel on “Walt Whitman and Reconstruction Cultural Narratives” for the MMLA annual convention to take place November 13-16, 2008, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Participants include: Jeremy Wells (Southern Illinois University-Carbondale), who will speak on “Leaves of Grass and the Romance of the Plantation”; Eve Rosenbaum (University of Iowa), speaking on “Walt Whitman’s Evolving Representations of the Capital City,”; and Tatia Jacobson Jordan (Florida State University, Tallahassee), presenting on “E. M. Forster’s Response to Whitman.”

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“What’s My Word?” on the Web

The literary radio program produced by the Modern Language Association, “What’s My Word?,” is now available for downloading or listening on the MLA website. One of the programs, “Walt Whitman and Democracy” (program #195), is devoted to Whitman and deals with the Civil War’s effects on Whitman’s vision of democracy, eroticism as an inspiration for Leaves of Grass, and Whitman’s influence on contemporary film. Participants in the discussion are Ed Folsom, Mark Maslan, and Kenneth Price. Other programs in the series have segments on Whitman. Program #247 is devoted to the theme of “The Elegy,” and Harold Aspiz is a participant, discussing “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d”. Program #105, on “Love Poetry,” includes Lee Edelman discussing Whitman influence on gay love poetry. Program #61, on “Literary Responses to the Civil War,” includes Stephen Cushman talking about the relationship of Whitman’s poetry to his experiences in the Civil War and the effect of photography of his poetry. Program #25, on “New York City Writers,” features David Reynolds talking about Whitman’s use of everyday aspects of city life in his poetry. 

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The Digital Americanists Project

The Digital Americanists, a new professional organization designed to support the scholarship and teaching of American literature and culture using digital media, was formally brought to life at the 2007 American Literature Association in Boston, and in the past couple of months the necessary frameworks have been set up to begin officially filling the organization's membership rolls.

At The Digital Americanists' new wiki-based website, http://www.digitalamericanists.org, you will find the constitution, an initial list of members, an initial list of associated digital projects, a bibliography of resources, some sample classroom syllabi and activities, and information on how to become a member along with a description of the privileges of membership.

After you've become a member and paid the modest $10 annual fee (which can be done conveniently online), we invite you to help build the wiki by adding information about yourself, your digital projects, your teaching, and whatever else you feel would be of interest to this community.

You are welcome to join and to help create a vibrant organization that can support this growing field of American literature scholarship.

Andrew Jewell, President
Edward Whitley, Vice-President
Amanda Gailey, Secretary/Treasurer

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The Transatlantic Whitman Association

In February 2007, fifteen scholars from Europe, the United States, and South America met in Paris, France, at Denis Diderot University (Paris 7) to organize The Transatlantic Walt Whitman Association. The group planned future conferences, seminars, and translation activities, and approved a charter for the organization, which will be headquartered at Tours University, academic home of Éric Athenot, who initiated the meeting. Anyone interested in more information about the Association or anyone wishing to join should contact Athenot by e-mail at <eric.athenot@wanadoo.fr>.

The Charter of The Transatlantic Walt Whitman Association

Preamble:
At the start of the twentieth century, a group of eminent Europeans sought “to found in Europe an organization . . . [to] assemble all the European admirers of [Walt Whitman] and propagate his works”(Letter from Léon Bazalgette to Johannes Schlaf, 1907). A century later, The Transatlantic Walt Whitman Association believes that Whitman remains a crucial figure for remembering and re-imagining the literary, critical, and political roles that poetry plays in the world. The Association explores and fosters the artistic, democratic, and intercultural vision of Walt Whitman in the context of the need for improved European and transatlantic cooperation. 

The Transatlantic Walt Whitman Association seeks to:

-- promote the cultural and literary presence of Walt Whitman, re-reading and re-writing him for the current age;
-- understand Whitman’s significance in Europe’s literary, political, and cultural heritage, as well as Europe’s influence on Whitman’s life and writings;
-- promote the teaching of Whitman’s works, especially in their intercultural contexts;
-- create a network of collaboration and exchange among teachers and students of Whitman, both within Europe and across the Atlantic;
-- cooperate with, and support, the work of The Walt Whitman Archive and of The Walt Whitman Quarterly Review in making Whitman’s writings, as well as writings about them, available to a broadening international audience;
-- endorse and enable the work of Whitman’s translators;
-- explore and foster the intersections between Whitman’s writings and other forms of cultural, social, and political expression.

February, 2007
Paris, France Éric Athenot (Tours University), Marina Camboni (University of Macerata), Mario Corona (University of Bergamo), Jeanne Cortiel (Dortmund University), Sami El Hage (Paris IV), Betsy Erkkila (NorthwesternUniversity), Ed Folsom (The University of Iowa), Christine Gerhardt (Dortmund University), Jay Grossman (Northwestern University), Walter Gruenzweig (Dortmund University), Merel Leeman (Amsterdam), Kenneth M. Price (University of Nebraska), Marta Skwara (Szczecin University), Maria Clara Paro (University of São Paulo)

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Whitman Making Books / Books Making Whitman Available

Ed Folsom’s catalog/commentary for the Whitman Making Books / Books Making Whitman symposium and exhibition held this past fall at The University of Iowa is now available for purchase from WWQR. The book is 80 pages, with over a hundred full-color illustrations of Whitman’s books. Folsom’s commentary explores Whitman as a bookmaker, as someone fully invested in the creation of his books. Tracing Whitman’s career as a printer and bookmaker from his early years in New York to his final years in Camden, New Jersey, Folsom has created what Joel Myerson in a review has described as “much more that the record of an exhibition—it is a biography of Whitman that will stand the test of time.” “Reversing [the] usual perspective,” writes Myerson, “Folsom focuses on Whitman’s print career to tell us about his life, both internal and external,” and, “in so doing, he overturns many critical assumptions about Whitman’s writings.” The book was published by The University of Iowa Obermann Center for Advanced Studies, and a limited number of copies are available for $15 (includes shipping). Checks should be made out to “WWQR” and sent to: Walt Whitman Quarterly Review, 308 EPB, The University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA 52242-1492.

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Walt Whitman Archive Receives Award from Society of American Archivists

The Walt Whitman Archive’s integrated guide to Whitman’s poetry manuscripts received the Society of American Archivists’ C.F.W. Coker Award during a ceremony on August 4, 2006, at the Joint Annual Meeting of the Society of American Archivists (SSA), Council of State Archivists, and the National Association of Government Archives and Records Administrators in Washington, D.C.

The Coker Award recognizes finding aids, finding aid systems, projects that involve innovative development in archival description, or descriptive tools that enable archivists to produce more effective finding aids. To merit consideration for the award, nominees must, in some significant way, set national standards, represent a model for archival description, or otherwise have a substantial impact on national descriptive practice.

TheWalt Whitman Archive, begun in 1995, is dedicated to the creation of a vast electronic scholarly resource that will eventually include in one online site the full range of work by and about the renowned poet of democracy. The integrated guide to the poet’s manuscripts is a significant accomplishment in finding aid innovation. It brings together thousands of poetry manuscripts into a searchable, browsable, and comprehensible form through the use of Encoded Archival Description (EAD). In doing so, this scholar-archivist-librarian collaboration located, listed, and described Whitman manuscripts—more than 30 finding aids from more than 29 repositories. The guide taps the potential of EAD and demonstrates the richness born in collaboration.

Established in 1983, the award honors the memory of SAA Fellow C.F.W. Coker. Previous recipients include the Online Archive of California; Waverly Lowell of the Environmental Design Archives at University of California, Berkeley, and Kelcy Shepherd of Special Collections and Archives at W.E.B. DuBois Library at University of Massachusetts, Amherst, for their guide, Standards Series of Architecture and Landscape Design Records: A Tool for Arrangement and Description of Archival Collections; and the Research Library Group’s Encoded Archival Description Advisory Group for its EAD Guide.