Session on the Profession

Friday, November 16

12:00pm, Hinds Library

Prof. Passannante received his Ph.D. from Princeton in 2007 and will be talking briefly about the genesis of his recently published book, The Lucretian Renaissance: Philology and the Afterlife of Tradition, which started as his dissertation. He will also answer questions about the dissertation process, the job market, and any other profession-related queries you may have.

“Catastrophizing: On Reading Disastrously in Shakespeare and Montaigne”

Thursday, November 15

6:00pm, McCosh 40

Gerard Passannante (Associate Professor, University of Maryland)

“Homely Language and the Language of Homily: John Donne’s Sermons”

Thursday, October 11

4:30pm, Hinds Library

Hannah Crawforth (Lecturer, King’s College London)

Workshop: “Decision, Possession: The Time of Law in The Winter’s Tale and the Sonnets”

Tuesday, December 6

12:00pm, McCosh B45

“Sonnet Being”

Monday, December 5

4:30pm, McCosh 26

This paper explores the strains endured by classical conceptions of tragedy when a protagonist who labors is forced upon it. Milton’s Samson, chained to his giant mill wheel, is trapped at a level below that of heroic action, history, and even genuine tragic suffering. At the same time, his labor adumbrates a universalism that, for later thinkers such as Hegel and Kierkegaard, characterizes all genuine tragic fictions.  The torsion exerted on tragic drama  by Milton’s laboring hero is symptomatic, I claim, of a dilemma afflicting tragedy more broadly in the modern era.

Richard Halpern (Sir William Osler Professor of English, Johns Hopkins University)