Talking American Literature at Uppsala: ‘A woman of striking vigour’: Gertrude Stein’s embodied nationality
- Datum: 4 september 2023, kl. 15.15–17.00
- Plats: Engelska parken, Rum 16-1044 och via Zoom (länk i beskrivningen nedan)
- Typ: Föreläsning
- Föreläsare: Isabelle Parkinson (Royal Holloway, London)
- Arrangör: Engelska institutionen
- Kontaktperson: Daniel Kane
The American literature program at Uppsala in collaboration with SINAS are delighted to host Dr Isabelle Parkinson as part of our American literature / American studies seminar series.
ABSTRACT:
Dr Parkinson will discuss her recent monograph, Gertrude Stein and the Politics of Participation, which explores the politics of the right to write in Gertrude Stein’s practice and its reception, examining how conceptions of authorship intersected discourses of democracy and rights in the period 1909-1933. The book investigates the ways in which Stein reconfigured her authorship in response to rapidly changing political and cultural conditions. It shows how the arguments over her authorial validity reproduced debates about who should participate in public life, refracted an emerging discourse of human rights and echoed fears about the consequences of mass democracy as political franchise was extended. In the seminar, Isabelle will focus on the shifting constructions of European and American literary identities in the discourse of Stein’s authorship, considering how conceptions of national ‘character’ are figured in discursive imaginings of the author’s body.
Isabelle Parkinson is a Teaching Fellow at Royal Holloway, University of London. Her research examines the relations between modernism and democracy, with a focus on the cultural, social and political institutions involved in legitimating and regulating authorship and aesthetic participation. She has published several articles and book chapters, including work on Gertrude Stein’s authorial identity, on the role of the anthology in constructing an avant-garde canon, and on interwar discourses of intellectual disability. Gertrude Stein and The Politics of Participation: Democracy, Rights and Modernist Authorship 1909-1933 (Edinburgh UP) was published in 2023.
Join Zoom Meeting: https://uu-se.zoom.us/j/63848895647