Romanticism, Now and Then:
A New Literary History Workshop
April 20-21, 2018
University of Virginia
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 Culture 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
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