Multiformalisms: Postmodern Poetics of Form

March 16th 2010, Tuesday, 6:30pm, Rooms 9206-9207

Join poet and editor Annie Finch, along with contributors to the anthology Multiformalisms: Postmodern Poetics of Form, for a lively discussion of how contemporary poets use and understand forms. The conversation, like the book, will juxtapose traditional formalism and Flarf, the American long poem and native Hawaiian poetry, rhyme in Paul Muldoon and textual variability in New Media poetry, Susan Howe and Lucinda Roy, jazz and Asian American poetics, and much more. Featuring Marilyn Hacker, Patricia Smith, Marie-Elizabeth Mali, Tyler Hoffman,  and Stefania deKenessey. Moderated by Corey Frost.

Co-sponsored by the Poetics Group

Only a God Can Save Us: Martin Heidegger and the Third Reich

Film Screening and Discussion
March 17th 2010, Wednesday, 6:00pm, Proshansky Auditorium

Join us for the American premiere of the documentary Only A God Can Save Us, a critical examination of Martin Heidegger’s thought and actions during the Third Reich. Fifteen years in the making, the film reveals how essential elements of Heidegger’s philosophy led him to become an enthusiastic supporter of Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist revolution. The film also addresses his long post-war silence about the Holocaust and his reluctance to make a public apology. Following the screening we will host a discussion with filmmaker Jeffery Van Davis and Richard Wolin, Distinguished Professor of History, the Graduate Center.

Co-sponsored by the PhD Program in History

Mashups, Memes, and HOWTOs: New Forms of Online Video

March 17th 2010, Wednesday, 7:30pm, The Skylight Room (9100)

Online video has rapidly developed genres, conventions, and topics based around a quest for video views and internet fame. These attempts often revolve around themes and tactics as diverse as political humor, cute animals, the lulz, appropriation, instructional videos, and the ambiguous amalgam of the confessional documentary that turns out to, in fact, be short form fiction. This panel will bring together three scholar-practitioners to present and discuss specific examples of this work: Patrick Davison, Eyebeam, a not-for-profit art and technology center; Michael Mandiberg, Assistant Professor of Media Culture, College of Staten Island; and Marisa Olson, Assistant Professor of New Media, SUNY-Purchase.

Co-sponsored by the Digital Media Studies Group and the ITP doctoral certificate program

The Weight of Photography: a symposium

March 18th 2010, Thursday, Noon-4:30pm, Martin E. Segal Theatre

Has photography become weightless? In the midst of an increasingly global and digital culture, can we still talk about photography as a distinct entity? Should museum departments, exhibitions, schools and academic classes continue to be devoted to photography alone? Join us for a half-day symposium exploring philosophical and historical questions regarding the nature of photographic representation. Featuring presentations by scholars such as Willem Elias, Johan Swinnen, Luc Deneulin, and Tamara Berghmans of the Free University of Brussels, alongside curators, such as Chris Phillips, from International Center for Photography as well as scholars from the US, this symposium offers a distinctively international perspective on photography’s identity just as it has become particularly uncertain. Moderated by Geoffrey Batchen, Professor of Art History, The Graduate Center, CUNY.

A full schedule will be posted here shortly.

Co-sponsored by the PhD Program in Art History

End of Biography: Purpose, Promise, Prospects

The Annual Conference
March 19th 2010, Friday, 10:30am-6:00pm, Elebash Recital Hall

Why read biography?  For information?  Aesthetic pleasure?  What can biography contribute to a compassionate knowledge of our world, what understanding of ourselves or of the past? What is its relation to the said and the not-said?  Mull over these questions at the Second Annual Conference of Leon Levy Center for Biography, with distinguished guests including keynote speaker Arnold Rampersad (Stanford, and author of acclaimed biographies of Langston Hughes, Jackie Robinson, and Ralph Ellison).  

Other participants include Catherine Clinton (Queens University Belfast, Mrs. Lincoln: A Life), Gary Giddins (CUNY, Jazz), Molly Haskell (film critic, Frankly, My Dear), Langdon Hammer (Yale, Hart Crane and Allen Tate), Richard Howard (Columbia, Pulitzer prize winning poet, translator, essayist), Caryn James (film critic, What Catherine Knew), D.T. Max (New Yorker), Jed Perl (art critic, The New Republic; Antoine’s Alphabet), Andrew Sarris (prize-winning film critic, The American Cinema), Eric Salzman (composer, The New Music Theater), Ileene Smith (editor-at-large, Yale University Press), Amanda Vaill (Somewhere: The Life of Jerome Robbins), Steve Wasserman (literary agent, former editor of the LA Times Book Review), and Brenda Wineapple (Director of the Leon Levy Center for Biography, White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson).

Check leonlevycenterforbiography.org for updates, schedule, and a list of other participants. Or contact the Leon Levy Center for Biography at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , 212-817-2008.

Co-sponsored by the Leon Levy Center for Biography