New Literary History Workshop

Romanticism, Now and Then

April 20-21, 2018

This intensive two-day workshop will bring together literary historians, musicologists, and art historians to reflect on the present, past, and future of Romanticism, as an interpretive project and a field of interdisciplinary inquiry. Hosted by New Literary History and the Institute of the Humanities & Global Cultures at the University of Virginia, the workshop begins with opening remarks on Friday, April 20 at 1:00, and concludes with a discussion on Saturday, April 21, from 5:00-5:30. The event is free and open to the public.

• How has the Romanticist interpretive project developed in recent decades, particularly in dialogue with literary theory and historiography?
• In this bicentennial era of the Romantic period, what connections and modes of remembering obtain, and to what ends?
• In what senses does Romanticism imply a method, a form, a politics?
• What are the abiding keywords, concepts, and challenges of Romanticism within and across disciplines, and what questions or arenas of thought have ceased to be central?
• What futures do you see for Romanticism as a conceptual and/or professional field?

Friday April 20

Institute of the Humanities & Global Culture
Wilson Hall Room 142

1:00-1:15 Opening remarks

Bruce Holsinger and Andrew Stauffer

New Literary History and Department of English, University of Virginia

1:15-2:15 “Romantic Difficulty”

Anahid Nersessian

Department of English, UCLA

2:30-3:30 “Le romantisme en Haïti: History, Historiography, Form”

Marlene Daut

Program in American Studies & Carter G. Woodson Institute for African-American and African Studies, University of Virginia

3:45-4:45 “The Question of Sensibility”

James Chandler

Department of English, University of Chicago

 
Saturday April 21

Institute of the Humanities & Global Culture
Wilson Hall Room 142

9:30-10:30 “The Arabesque from Kant to Comics”

Cordula Grewe

Department of Art History, Indiana University

10:45-11:45 “Romantic Musical Aesthetics and the Transmigration of Soul”

Holly Watkins

Department of Musicology, Eastman School of Music and University of Rochester

12:00-1:30 Lunch

1:30-2:30 “Romantic Subjects and Iambic Laws: Episodes in the Early History of Contract Negotiations”

Jerome McGann

Department of English, University of Virginia

2:45-3:45 “Kindred Spirits: Transatlantic Romantic Poetics”

Virginia Jackson

Departments of English and Comparative Literature, UC-Irvine

4:00-5:00 “Romanticism and the Avowal of Coevalness”

Tristram Wolff

Departments of English and Comparative Literature, Northwestern University

5:00-5:30 Closing discussion