Day 1 Information

A weekend of presentation, reflection, and inquiry addressing the work and life of Norman O. Brown. From poetics to politics, theology to pedagogy, utopia to apocalypse: scholars from around the country will meet to engage Brown’s long shadow. Amidst the landscapes he traversed incessantly, we can gauge the importance of Norman O. Brown for the 21st century.

Saturday, May 18th
9:00 – 9:30. Breakfast / coffee
9:30 – 11:30. “There is Only Poetry: Form and Possibility in the Brownian Imagination”
11:30 – 1:30. Lunch / visit to the Norman O. Brown archival display
1:30 – 3:30. “Utopia and/or Revolution: Radicalism, Counterculture, Arts”
3:30 – 4:00. Break / coffee
4:00 – 6:00. “Closing Time: A Roundtable on Brown’s Life and Legacy”
7:00 – Onward. Reception and dinner for participants and friends

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There is Only Poetry: Form and Possibility in the Brownian Imagination
Matthew O’Malley, moderator
Jay Cantor, “On Love’s Body”
Michael Davidson, “The Double Agent: Norman O. Brown / Robert Duncan”
Andrew Schelling, “Nobby, or Metamorphosis”
Daniel Tiffany, “Diction and the Prophetic Voice”
Rob Wilson, “‘Transfiguration’ as a World-Making Poetics”

Utopia and/or Revolution: Radicalism, Counterculture, Arts
Johanna Isaacson, moderator
Rebecca Herzig, “Alma Mater”
Stuart Kendall, “Fearless Majesty: Norman O. Brown’s Dionysian Vision”
Jed Rasula, “Norman O. Brown’s Poetics”
Stephen Carter, “Politics, Metapolitics, and Depoliticization: History and Archetype in the Work of Norman O. Brown”
Jonathan Beecher, “Exchanges with Nobby: Fourier, Faust, Palingenesis”
Gary Miles, “A Naif’s View from the Trenches”

Closing Time: A Roundtable on Brown’s Life and Legacy
Isaac Blacksin, moderator
Nor Hall on pedagogy
Jim Clifford on metamorphosis
Bob Meister on chance
Jerome Neu on Freud
Chris Connery on liberation

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Sponsored by Cowell College, the Humanities Institute, the Siegfried B. and Elisabeth Mignon Puknat Literary Studies Endowment, and the History of Consciousness department.