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Lectures funded by private donation in honor of CUNY scholars The Irving Howe Memorial Lecture Annual lecture Irving Howe (1920-1993) graduated from City College 1940. He was a founder of Democratic Socialists of America and was considered one of the country's most influential literary critics until his death. He founded Dissent magazine, and was a professor at Brandeis and Stanford Universities before he became a Distinguished Professor of Literature at the City University of New York. His books include Politics and the Novel, World of Our Fathers, and Socialism in America. A noted editor of Yiddish literature who discovered the author Isaac Bashevis Singer for an English-speaking audience, he also put together A Treasury of Yiddish Poetry. He won the MacArthur Award in 1987. The annual lecture endowed in his honor focus on the subjects closest to Irving Howe’s heart, including politics, Yiddish and Jewish culture, immigrant history and the modern literary imagination. 2009 "Escaping Bush's State of Exception: Torture and Truth, Obama and Us" (forthcoming, November 18 at 6:30pm) Mark Danner, Professor of Journalism at the University of California-Berkeley and the James Clarke Chace Professor of Foreign Affairs, Politics and the Humanities at Bard College 2008 "What Shakespeare's Heroes Learn" David Bromwich, Sterling Professor of English, Yale University 2007 “Sectarianism—Political and Religious” Avishai Margalit, George Kennan Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton 2006 “The Enchantment of the Word: Language and the Study of Literature” Robert Alter, Professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature at the University of California at Berkeley 2005 “Can We Stop the Radical Right?” Paul Krugman, Professor of Economics and International Affairs at Princeton University 2004 “What Was the Third World Revolution?” Clifford Geertz, Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton 2003 “The Root of Anti-Semitism” A. B. Yehoshua, Novelist, essayist, playwright, and Senior Lecturer at the University of Haifa 2002 “In Schools We Trust?” Deborah Meier, Educator, McArthur Fellow, member of the Editorial Board of Dissent 2000 “Shakespeare and Politics” Frank Kermode, King Edward VII Professor of English Literature at Cambridge University 1999 “Art and Invention: How Shakespeare and Pushkin Create Character” John Bayley, Warton Professor of English Literature, St. Catherine’s College, Oxford 1998 “Two More Cheers for Utopia” Alan Ryan, Warden of New College, Oxford 1997 “The Alibi of Art” Roger Shattuck, Professor Emeritus, Boston University 1996 “Politics of Religion: The Jewish Experience” Michael Walzer, Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton The Stanley Burnshaw Lecture Biannual lecture co-sponored by the University of Texas Stanley Burnshaw, born in New York City on June 20, 1906, is a poet, critic, novelist, playwright, publisher, editor, translator, and scholar recognized primarily for his poetry and literary criticism. He received an award for creative writing from the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1971, and in 1983 was awarded an honorary doctor of humane letters degree by Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion. The Stanley Burnshaw Reader (1989) provides an excellent overview of his work in poetry, translation, literary criticism, and biography. Three weeks before his ninetieth birthday, the City University of New York awarded him an honorary doctor of letters degree. The Burnshaw lecture is hosted alternately by The Center for the Humanities at The Graduate Center and The Harry Ransom Center for Research in the Humanities at the University of Texas, Austin. 2008 “Who Reads Poetry? Robert Pinsky, Professor in the English Department of Boston University, former U.S. Poet Laureate 2006 “Poetry as Enchantment (in a Disenchanted Age)” Dana Gioia, Poet and Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts 2004 “The Art of the Impossible: Poetry and Translation” Charles Simic, Poet and Professor of English at the University of New Hampshire 2002 “Genius and Genius” Harold Bloom, Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale 2000 “The Music of Poetry” Galway Kinnell, Poet and Erich Maria Remarque Professor of Creative Writing, New York University 1998 “T. S. Eliot and the Poem Itself” Denis Donoghue, Henry James Professor of English and American Letters, New York University 1997 “Joyce’s Ulysses and the Common Reader” Robert Alter, Professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature at the University of California at Berkeley |
