Past Events
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Oct 27Chemistry, Autarky, and Empire: Manufacturing Film in Fascist Germany📽️
Memorial Library, Room 126
We often think of cinema’s politics as matters of subject and style, distribution and reception. This talk, however, locates them in film’s raw materials—in substances like silver, gelatin, and cotton, on which cinema’s play of light and shadow depends. It does so through the case of Nazi Germany, examining the Agfa film company’s embrace of …
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Oct 24🎤When the Wild Things Are: Variations on the Eternal Return
Helen C. White, Room 6191
the Modernism/Contemporary Graduate Student Colloquium is hosting guest speaker CalArts Professor and boundary 2 co-editor Arne De Boever for his talk, “When the Wild Things Are: Variations on the Eternal Return (of the Same).” Professor De Boever is well known for his thinking contemporary philosophy and political thought, which includes monographs such as Plastic Sovereignties …
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Oct 23🗣️English Alumni Speaker Series: Michael Braun
Lecture: Helen C. White, Room 6191 (11:30-12:15pm) / Lunch: Helen C. White, Room 7191 (12:30-1:30pm)
Join us in a conversation with alumnus Michael Braun, Owner and Editor-in-Chief of Orange Hat Publishing. Braun will talk about Orange Hat, share his journey into editing and publishing, and offer insights into the path to publication for aspiring writers. This event is part of our ongoing English Alumni Speaker Series, highlighting the diverse careers …
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Oct 22🧠 English Alumni in PhD Programs, a Panel
Zoom
Curious about pursuing a PhD in English Literature? Hear from four alumni of our undergraduate major who are currently enrolled in doctoral programs at institutions across the country. Panelists will share their experiences, offer advice on applying to graduate school, and reflect on how their time in the UW–Madison English Department shaped their academic paths. …
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Oct 17🍎 Secondary Education Masters in English Information Session
Helen C. White, Room 7191
Interested in becoming a teacher? Join Danny Miller and Addy Hagen for an overview of the Secondary Education Masters in English program. Learn about the application process, the teacher pledge, and what life in the classroom might look like. A Q&A will follow the presentation. This free, in-person event is open to undergraduate students. No …
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Oct 17Rachel Carson’s Kitsch Ecologies🏞️
University Club, Room 313
Twenty-first-century ecological thought tends to coalesce around a certain critical framework. Decenter the human and resist anthropomorphism. Highlight “weedy” or “feral,” interstitial landscapes rather than pretty or picturesque ones. Refuse the reduction of the more-than-human world to commodity logic or road trip aesthetics. Sever ecological thought from its etymological origin in home, or oikos. What, …
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Oct 16“Claude Cahun’s Curiosity” with Hannah Freed-Thall🗣️
Elvehjem, Room L150
Join us and the Center for Visual Cultures and Performance (CVCPS) for a talk by Hannah Freed-Thall, Professor at New York University. This talk explores the anti-fascistic potential of curiosity, taking avant-garde artist Claude Cahun as a case study. In 1930, Cahun and their partner Marcel Moore published Cancelled Confessions — a genre-exploding anti-memoir, alt-Surrealist …
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Oct 15Pedagogy Brown Bag Lunch🥪
Helen C. White, Room 6191
Join your colleagues to build community around our teaching experiences, troubleshoot pedagogical challenges, and learn and grow together as teachers in our Pedagogy Brown Bag Lunch workshops. Anyone who teaches in the English Department, including TAs, instructional staff, and faculty, is warmly welcome. BYO lunch. This free, in-person event is open to graduate students, faculty, …
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Oct 14Quan Barry book launch for her new novel, The Unveiling📖
Madison Public Library, 201 W Mifflin St / Meeting Rooms 301 and 302 Combined
Our very own, Amy Quan Barry will read from her new novel, The Unveiling, at the downtown Madison Public Library on the Wisconsin Book Festival. The Unveiling chronicles the struggles of Striker, a Black film scout, who, along with a group of wealthy white tourists, becomes stranded on a remote island in the Antarctic Peninsula …
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Oct 9🗣️CEMS Guest Lecture: Miriam Jacobson, “The Radical Creativity of Early Modern Antiquarianism”
Location TBA
“The Radical Creativity of Early Modern Antiquarianism” This talk delves into the geographical and historical epic Poly-Olbion, a collaborative tome by poet Michael Drayton, historian John Selden, and engraver William Hole, arguing that early modern books served as immersive and sensory forms of antiquarian reenactment —attempts to resurrect and interact with the past directly. In …