Laura Tanner recently recorded an interview on 9/11 that is serving as the inaugural podcast for a new program at Brandeis called Literature Lab, which is designed to introduce the broader public to the work of literary scholars. The podcast is available online and through itunes

Frances Restuccia gave a talk titled "Divine Violence" at the first Zizek Studies Conference in Rochester, New York, April 28th.

Lad Tobin presented a paper, "Narrative Transitions: Taking and Teaching the Reflective Turn," at AWP (The Conference of the Associated Writing Programs) in Chicago.

Min Hyoung Song gave a talk entitled "The Absolute Rule of That Which Is: Reflections on the Los Angeles Riots Twenty Years Later" at Pomona College in Claremont, California on Tuesday, April 24. He also presented a talk entitled "Rodney King, Redux" at that Harvard Symposium "LA Riots: Twenty Years Later" on Saturday, April 28.

Composer Kevin Beavers’ setting of Andrew Sofer’s poem “Wandlebury Ring” was performed at the University of Indianapolis as part of its Faculty Artist Series (Guest Composer Concert) on April 16.

Robert Stanton presented a paper entitled "Authority and Anxiety in Old English Biblical Translation" at a symposium on "Translating the Bible in the Middle Ages" at the Real Colegio Complutense, Harvard University, on April 20.

Paul Lewis, Curator, Forgotten Chapters of Boston’s Literary History, an exhibition at the Boston Public Library and Massachusetts Historical Society, March 28-July 30, 2012, and online.

Mary Crane gave a talk, "Spenser's Problem with Endings," at the Durham University Balzan Workshop on "Literary and Cognitive Ends."

Mary Crane co-directed a seminar on "The Past, Present, and Future of Shakespeare Studies" with Emily Bartels of Rutgers at the recent Shakespeare Association of America conference in Boston.

Min Hyoung Song was the chair and respondent of a working papers sessions entitled "Situation Asian American Critique: The Poetics of Resistance in Place" at the annual meeting of the Association for Asian American Studies, April 11-13, in Washington, D.C. He also acted as a respondent on a panel entitled "Eating, Elections, and Exclusion: A Century of Asian American Transnational Politics in History and Literature, 1911-2011."

Min Hyoung Song published an interview with Maxine Hong Kingston in the Asian American Literary Review 3:1 (Spring 2012).

Carlo Rotella gave the inaugural Mary and John Blixen Lecture in American Studies, "Hollywood on the Charles: A Provincial Backwater Goes Global," at St. Louis University on April 13. On April 11 and 12 he served on the President's Advisory Board evaluating the English department at Carnegie-Mellon University.

Frances Restuccia gave a talk titled "Intimate Volver" (on Kristeva and Almodovar's film) at the B.C. Conference, "After the Unthinkable: trauma, nachtraglichkeit, and coming to terms" (March 22-24). She also presented a paper at the ACLA (American Comparative Literature Association) Conference at Brown University titled "Messianic Aesthetics: Lily Briscoe's Vision" and participated in the 3-day seminar "Twists of the New Aesthetic Turn."

Maxim D. Shrayer delivered "Ilya Selvinsky and the Price of Bearing Witness to the Shoah" at Jewish Life and Death in the Soviet Union during World War II, an international conference at the University of Toronto. Shrayer's article "After Rapture and Recapture: Transformations in the Drafts of Nabokov's Stories" was reprinted in "Short Story Criticism, SSC-163" (Detroit: Gale Cengage Learning, 2011).

Tina Klein presented a paper “Kennan, Containment, and Cold War Cultural Studies” at the conference “George F. Kennan: An American Life,” Williams College, April 7.

Julie Orlemanski presented a paper entitled "Things without Faces" at the American Comparative Literature Association annual conference, in Providence, RI on March 30th.

Kevin Ohi gave a paper at the SCMS conference in Boston on March 22. Speaking in a workshop—"Belly of the Beast: Queer Cinema and Media Studies on Conservative and Religious Campuses"—his paper was entitled "Rubbing the Belly of the Beast: Obedience Training and Positive Reinforcement," and it presented a reading of Plato's Symposium.

Robert Stanton presented "Teaching Medieval Mystics to Catholic Undergraduates and Semi-Catholic Graduate Students" in a roundtable on "Medieval Studies in Catholic Universities" at the Annual Meeting of the Medieval Academy of America in St Louis, MO on March 23.

Chris Wilson's Fall WIP talk has now been published: "'He Fell Just Short of Being News': Gatsby's Tabloid Shadows," American Literature 84 (March 2012): 119-149.

Dennis Taylor, “Dante and Christian Mortalism: Where is the Resurrection in The Divine Comedy?”, Dante and the Poetry of Revelation Conference, Assumption College, Worcester, March 30, 2012.

Carlo Rotella participated in a symposium, "Sports Writing and the Writing of Sport," at Rice University on March 31.

Paul Lewis, “The Good, the Great, and the Deliciously Awful: Why Boston Needs a Literary Trail," Boston Globe, April 1, 2012, Ideas Section, 12.

Paul Lewis, "Longfellow’s Serenity and Poe’s Prediction: An Antebellum Turning Point,” New England Quarterly, Volume 85 (March 2012), 144-158.

Paul Mariani. Art Essay: “In the Footsteps of Ignatius: Following a Saint Through Spain.” America Magazine, Vol. 206, No. 7 (March 5, 2012).

Paul Mariani. Poem. “Operating Room, Upper East Side, March 1945” America Magazine, Vol. 206 No. 9 (March 12, 2012).

Paul Mariani. Two Poems. "A Modest Ode to Joy for My Sophia" and "The Blank Canvas James Franco Says He Saw," Vineyards: A Journal of Christian Poetry, Vol. 2 (Spring 2012), pp. 14-15.

Joe Nugent's article Clerical Errors: Reading Desire in a Nineteenth-century Painting was published in the recent edition of Éire-Ireland.

The Third Annual D'Arcy Magee Lecture at St Mary's College, Halifax, NS, was given by Joe Nugent on March 1. His presentation was called "Dirty Irish: Olfaction and the National Stereotype."

Min Hyong Song gave a talk entitled "'Soylent Green Is Made of People: The Importance of Laughing at Disgusting Food" at the Society of Cinema and Media Studies conference on Friday, March 23.

Min also presented a chapter from his book manuscript "The Children of 1965: On Writing and Not Writing as an Asian American" at the University of Connecticut, Storrs on Saturday, March 24. This was part of a workshop entitled "The State of Asian America."

Tina Klein presented a paper, "Multiple Vernacular Modernisms in Han Hyung-mo's Madame Freedom (1956)," at the Society for Cinema and Media Studies annual conference, where she also commentated on a panel titled "Cold War Politics and East Asian Cinema Reconsidered" (March 22 and 24). At the Association for Asian Studies annual conference in Toronto she commented on a panel titled "Solidarity and Trespasses: Cultural Formations of Cold War Cosmopolitanism in East Asia" (March 18).

Carlo Rotella gave a paper, "Shipping Up to Boston: A Pecking Order," at the Pop Conference at NYU on March 23. On March 24 he chaired and commented on a session, "The Global Southie: Boston and the Cinema of Class," at the Society for Cinema Studies conference in Boston.

Min Hyoung Song spoke on a panel entitled "Why Los Angeles Exploded: Perspectives on the Urban Upheavals from 20 Years Out" at Emerson College on Weds, February 29, 2012.

Christopher P. Wilson, "Rough Justice: Crime, Corruption, and Urban Governance," in U.S. Popular Print Culture 1860-1920, vol. 6 of the Oxford History of Popular Print Culture, ed. Christine Bold (Oxford UP: 2012): 555-571.

Julie Orlemanski presented a paper entitled "Medial Body / Figural Body" on Feb 9 at the symposium, "Surface, Symptom, and the State of Critique," sponsored by Exemplaria: A Journal of Theory and medieval Studies and the University of Texas.

Carlo Rotella, "Within Limits:  On the Greatness of Magic Slim," Pop When the World Falls Apart, ed. Eric Weisbard (Duke University Press, 2012): 230-239.

Andrew Sofer was a featured reader at the Temple Sinai Poetry Festival in Brookline on February 12.

Andrew Sofer served as a judge at Burlington High School’s “Poets Out Loud” poetry recitation finals on February 10, organized by BC alum Benjamin Lally (now head of English at BHS). Andrew also gave a guest poetry reading from his book WAVE.

Christopher P. Wilson, "The Underwater Narrative: Joan Didion's Miami," Literary Journalism Studies 3 (Fall 2011): 9-29.

Christopher P. Wilson has a review of Robert Redford's "The Conspirator" in the December 2011 issue of the Journal of American History.

Lori-Harrison-Kahan gave an invited talk about her book The White Negress as part of the Bernice Zigman Meet the Author Series at Temple Reyim in Newton on January 29.

Laura Tanner's essay, "Holding On to September 11: The Shifting grounds of Materiality," appears in the January 2012 issue of PMLA.

Frances Restuccia gave a talk, "Murder or Byzantium?" at MLA Convention, Seattle, WA, January 5, 2012, on a panel titled "Fiction and Theory in Julia Kristeva."

Dennis Taylor, “Protestant and Catholic Mortalism in Milton and Crashaw,” MLA Convention, Seattle, WA, January 7, 2012.

Dennis Taylor, “From Stratford to Casterbridge: The Influence of Shakespeare,” in Ashgate Research Companion to Thomas Hardy, ed. Rosemarie Morgan (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2010), 123-56.

Carlo Rotella's essay on Ron Lyle and Joe Frazier, "So Many Fearsome Contemporaries," appeared in the New York Times Magazine's annual Lives They Lived issue, December 25, 2011. "Hollywood on the Charles," on the movie industry's infatuation with Boston, is in the January issue of Boston.

James Najarian published an essay, "Sexual Politics and the Performance of Gender in Romantic Poetry," in A Companion to Romantic Literature. ed. by Charles Mahoney (Blackwell, 2011). James also gave a talk at UMass-Boston" How Buddhist is Western Buddhist Literature?" and one at the Victorians Institute Conference this November: "Harold Skimpole Once More: Gender and Romanticism in Bleak House." He published a poem, "Longed-For Rain," in "The Mennonite" 14.5 (May) 2011, p. 9; and another, "Church on the Block" in Collective Brightness: LGBTIQ Poets on Faith, Religion & Spirituality (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2011).

Maxim D. Shrayer delivered "Nabokov and Soviet Literature" and "Ilya Ehrenburg and the Price of Writing Poetry about the Shoah" at the annual conference of the Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies in Washington, DC.

Paula Mathieu is pleased to announce the release of Circulating Communities: The Tactics and Strategies of Community Publishing, edited by Paula Mathieu, Steve Parks and Tiffany Rousculp. NY: Lexington Books, 2012.

Suzanne Matson received a 2012 National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship in fiction.

Bob Chibka delivered a talk entitled "Of writing Minds in general, and particularly of Joseph Andrews: Finer Thoughts and Coarser Dears” at a joint meeting of the Northeast American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, the Canadian Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, and the Aphra Behn Society, in Hamilton, Ontario, October 27.

Maia McAleavey delivered a paper, "The Burden of the Plot: Ballad and Novel in Gaskell's Sylvia's Lovers," at the North American Victorian Studies Association's annual conference (October 2011).

Lori Harrison-Kahan and Diane Hotten-Somers organized a session entitled “Re-envisioning, Re-staging, and Retailing: National Identity and Ethnic Counter-Narratives” at the New England American Studies Association annual conference, which took place on November 4-5 at Plimoth Plantation. At the session, Diane presented a paper, “Jewish America Awakes and Sings the Irish Blues: Sean O’Casey, Clifford Odets, and Working-Class Identities.”

Lori Harrison-Kahan's “Interview with a Vampire Expert”—about recent scholarship that explores the connection between Dracula and anti-Semitism—appeared in The Jewish Advocate on October 28.

John Mahoney, a Resident Johnsonian, participated in the Annual Meeting of the Johnsonians at the Century Association Club in New York City on September 16. Michael Bundock presented his work on Samuel Johnson and Francis Barber, focusing on Boswell's LIFE.

John Mahoney, "Wordsworth and Ultimate Reality and Meaning: Poetry and Religious Practice" in URAM (U. of Toronto Press) 30.4, pp. 263-277.

Caroline Bicks, “Gender and Sexuality in Middleton’s Plays,” in Thomas Middleton in Context, ed. Suzanne Gossett. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2011. 263-270.

Caroline Bicks, “Instructional Performances: Ophelia and the Staging of History,” in Performance and Pedagogy on the Early Modern Stage: Gender, Instruction, and Performance, ed. Kathryn McPherson and Katherine Moncrief. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2011. 205-216.

Kevin Ohi, “The Consummation of the Swallow’s Wings: A Zoo Story,” The South Atlantic Quarterly 110: 3 (Summer 2011), 715-43; “Second Thoughts: Queer Maud-Evelyn,” in Kimberly Reed and Anna Despotopoulou, eds., Henry James and the Supernatural (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 137-48; “Queer Intervals.” Review of Kathryn Bond Stockton, The Queer Child (Durham: Duke UP, 2009) in GLQ: A Journal of Gay and Lesbian Studies 17:2-3 (2011), 438-441.

Kevin also gave two talks in July: “Tradition in Fragments: Swinburne’s ‘Anactoria,’” at the Decadent Poetics Conference, University of Exeter, UK, and “Lessons of the Master: James’s Queer Pedagogy,” at the International Henry James Association Conference, Rome, Italy.

Dayton Haskin gave a paper called "Paradise Lost at an Inhospitable Moment" at the Hospitable Text Conference held at Notre Dame's London Centre in July.

Kevin Ohi, “The Consummation of the Swallow’s Wings: A Zoo Story,” The South Atlantic Quarterly 110: 3 (Summer 2011), 715-43; “Second Thoughts: Queer Maud-Evelyn,” in Kimberly Reed and Anna Despotopoulou, eds., Henry James and the Supernatural (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 137-48; “Queer Intervals.” Review of Kathryn Bond Stockton, The Queer Child (Durham: Duke UP, 2009) in GLQ: A Journal of Gay and Lesbian Studies 17:2-3 (2011), 438-441.

Kevin also gave two talks in July: “Tradition in Fragments: Swinburne’s ‘Anactoria,’” at the Decadent Poetics Conference, University of Exeter, UK, and “Lessons of the Master: James’s Queer Pedagogy,” at the International Henry James Association Conference, Rome, Italy.

Lori Harrison-Kahan published an essay, “‘More Than a Garment’: Edna Ferber and the Fashioning of Transnational Identity,” in Cultures of Femininity in Modern Fashion, ed. Ilya Parkins and Elizabeth Sheehan (University Press of New England, 2011).

Amy Boesky’s personal essay, “Herculaneum,” has been accepted for publication by Michigan Quarterly Review. She was also a finalist in New Letters 2011 Poetry Prize.

Andrew Sofer studied meter with Timothy Steele at the West Chester Poetry Conference, more poetry with William Logan and Debora Greger at the Sewanee Writers Conference, and survived a 360-foot bungee jump off the Victoria Falls Bridge between Zambia and Zimbabwe on August 31.

Min Hyoung Song's article "Becoming Planetary" appeared in American Literary History 23.3.

Caroline Bicks and Jennifer Summit's book, The History of British Women’s Writing, 1500-1610, has received the 2011 Society for the Study of Early Modern Women Collaborative Project Award.

Caroline Bicks performed a self-authored piece for the comedy show "Not What I Signed Up For" at the Triad Theater in NYC last week. Fellow performers included Michael Ian Black and Andrea Martin.

Judith Wilt's essay “Unending: Acts of Retrieval in Pearl, Gilead, and The Year of Magical Thinking” was published this summer in Literature and Belief 31:1 (June 2011), 1-21.

Judith also gave a plenary paper, "Piratical Paradigms in Scott and Successors," at the Ninth Annual Walter Scott Conference at the University of Wyoming on July 9, 2011.

John Mahoney led a Symposium on "The Romantic Voice and Ultimate Meaning" (Blake, Wordsworth, Keats) at the 16th Biennial Conference of the International Society for the Study of Ideas of Ultimate Reality and Meaning at Regis College, University of Toronto, August 10-13, 2011.

Maia McAleavey's article, "The Discipline of Tears in The Old Curiosity Shop" appeared in Dickens Studies Annual 54.

Maia also delivered a paper, "Bigamy's Visible History," at the Victorian Popular Fiction Association's annual conference, in London July 18-19, 2011.

Robert Stanton presented "“So hy contemplacyon and so meche dalyawns of owr Lord”: Direct Confession in Late-Medieval Sermons and The Book of Margery Kempe" at the International Medieval Congress, Leeds, UK, on July 13, 2011.

Dayton Haskin contributed an essay called "The Love Lyric" to the newly published Oxford Handbook of John Donne, ed. Jeanne Shami et al. (Oxford University Press, 2011): 180-205.

Tina Klein gave a paper titled "Cinematic Memories: Traces of the Korean War in Contemporary Cinema" at a conference hosted by NYU, "The (Unending) Korean War", April 22-23, 2011.

Maxim D. Shrayer published "Rescuing a Jewish-Russian Boy: Nabokov’s Stories in Anticipation of Catastrophe" in "Nabokovski sbornik" ("Nabokov Collection," St. Petersburg).

Maxim D. Shrayer gave a master class and a reading at Reed College where his book "Yom Kippur in Amsterdam" is on the syllabus of a Russian Short Story course. Shrayer also delivered "Jewish-Russian Poets Bearing Witness to the Shoah" at Portland State University.

Carlo Rotella's profile of Shaun Tan, "A Wild Mind Loose in Suburbia," appeared in yesterday's New York Times Magazine (April 24, 2011): pp. 24-29.

Amy Boesky was awarded a Howard Foundation Fellowship for next year to work on her new creative nonfiction project.

James Smith: “The Ryan Report, State Complicity, and the Magdalene Laundries.” Symposium on the American and Irish Roman Catholic Clerical Sexual Abuse Crises, sponsored by the Sanzone Center for Catholic Studies and Theological Reflection, Le Moyne College, Syracuse, New York, March 23, 2011.

James Smith: “The Irish Magdalen Laundries.” D’Arcy McGee Lecture in Irish Studies, 2011. St. Mary’s University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, March 11, 2011.

James Smith: “A Book’s Afterlife: The Ryan Report, State Complicity, and the Magdalen Laundries.” The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Center for Celtic Studies, UWM, March 7, 2011.

Ti Bodenheimer presented a paper, "The Temporalities of Biography," at the Rushton Seminars of the University of Virginia English Department, March 25.

Lori Harrison-Kahan gave a talk, "Just Like Us? Comparative Ethnic Studies and the Black-Jewish Imaginary," at the University of Connecticut on March 21, 2011.

Min Hyoung Song has been selected to be the next editor of the Journal of Asian American Studies for a two-year term, beginning at the start of 2012.