Founded in Paris in 2007, the Transatlantic Walt Whitman Association (TWWA) invites students, researchers, and Whitman enthusiasts to participate in its 13th annual Whitman Week, consisting of a seminar for students interested in Whitman and Whitman’s poetry, and a symposium bringing together international scholars and graduate students. In 2023, the Whitman Week will take place for the first time in Rome, at Sapienza University of Rome from June 12 to June 17. Please view the full Call for Papers on the website: https://whitmanweekrome2023.com/
Seminar Structure
In the morning classes, focusing on some of Whitman’s major poems and selections from his prose, students will have an opportunity to confront Whitman’s books, share their readings of key poems and clusters, and discuss Whitman’s cohesive representation of human relations and his work’s international significance. Afternoon translation workshops will focus on the reception of Whitman in various countries, as well as the translation of his poems into different languages.
The team of international instructors of this year’s seminar comes from France, Germany, Italy and the United States: Éric Athenot (Université Paris-Est Créteil), Marina Camboni (University of Macerata), Ed Folsom (University of Iowa), Zachary Turpin (University of Idaho), Manuel Broncano (Texas A&M International University) and Walter Grünzweig (Technischen Universität Dortmund).
Housing
International students will live together at no charge with Sapienza students, thus creating opportunities for meaningful intercultural dialogue.
Applications
Applications for the seminar should include a curriculum vitae, a one-page statement of interest, and a short letter of support from an instructor who knows the applicant well.
All the documents, including the letter of recommendation, should be submitted by e-mail to the Rome organizers, Giorgio Mariani (giorgio.mariani@uniroma1.it) and Daphne Orlandi (daphne.orlandi@uniroma1.it), by March 1, 2023.
Symposium
A two-day Symposium, featuring scholarly papers by Whitman scholars and graduate students from various countries, will be held immediately following the seminar (16-17 June). All those who are only interested in attending the symposium should submit a one-page paper proposal by February 15, 2023 (see CFP below).
Symposium CFP
War and Peace: Whitman’s Civil War Writings, Friday, 16 June and Saturday, 17 June 2023
Whitman’s Civil War writings are vast and various—from the poetry he collected in Drum-Taps (1865) to his prose recollections of the war in Memoranda During the War (1875- 76)—and they range from early enthusiastic support for the war effort to a much more tempered examination of the war’s “convulsions” and trauma that came as a result of his work in the Civil War hospitals. This symposium invites papers that deal with Whitman’s war writings in fresh and original ways. Is his writing during the 1861-1865 period a literature of war or a literature of peace? What new insights do the recent fields of trauma theory and disability studies offer to us for reading his hospital writings? How did Whitman’s experiences in the war and memories of his hospital work affect and alter his post-Civil War writing? How does his Civil War poetry relate to other poetry written during the war (including Melville’s)? What were Whitman’s attitudes toward the Confederacy and Confederate soldiers? Where do the issues of slavery and emancipation appear in these writings? How does Whitman imagine that the postwar “peace” will develop? We welcome papers that deal with these and other questions that emerge from a re-examination of Whitman’s writing during the Civil War and into Reconstruction.
This symposium invites scholars and artists from all fields to contribute. As part of the symposium, a student research poster session for attending students on any topic dealing with Whitman is planned.
One-page abstracts of paper proposals should be sent electronically, no later than February 15, 2023 to all four symposium organizers:
Stephanie M. Blalock: stephanie-blalock@uiowa.edu Giorgio Mariani: giorgio.mariani@uniroma1.it Kenneth M. Price: kprice2@unl.edu
Julia Sattler: julia.sattler@udo.edu