“Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems”

New York, NY: Sixth Annual “Song of Myself” Marathon

Sunday, September 6, 3:00-5:30 pm (free to SSS Museum members; $5 non-members) aboard the tall ship Peking at the South Street Seaport Museum. A reading of Whitman’s great poem, hosted by NYU Professor Karen Karbiener, in which you are heartily invited to participate! For more information or to sign up for the reading, please contact Christine Modica at cmodica@southstseaport.org or 212. 748. 8738. Leave your name, email, and poem sections of preference (if any).

Bravo Walt Whitman’s 1855 Leaves of Grass Audiotext!

Fellow international Whitmanists…

Check out this link for a choral reading and virtual experience of the 1855 Leaves of Grass.

http://www.laits.utexas.edu/leavesofgrass/

“My voice goes after what my eyes cannot reach.”

International Whitman Week 2009

Within me latitude widens, longitude lengthens…

Welcome to the Transatlantic Walt Whitman Association student blog. Leave a comment to start a conversation, make an announcement, or make suggestions about display and content.

“My spirit has pass’d in compassion and determination around the whole earth,

“I have look’d for equals and lovers and found them ready for me in all lands,

“I think some divine rapport has equalized me with them.”

-”Salut au Monde!”

Announcing International Whitman Week 2009

INTERNATIONAL WHITMAN WEEK 2009
SEMINAR AND SYMPOSIUM

Université François-Rabelais, Tours, France, 8-14 June 2009

The Transatlantic Walt Whitman Association (TWWA), founded in Paris in 2007, invites students, researchers, and Whitman enthusiasts to participate in its second Whitman Week, consisting of a seminar for advanced students interested in Whitman and Whitman’s poetry, and a symposium bringing together international scholars and graduate students.

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International Whitman Seminar: Walt Whitman’s Poetry in the 21^st Century
Université François-Rabelais

Walt Whitman’s poetry, written in the 19^th century, continues to have a strong impact on literatures and cultures worldwide. Every year new editions of Whitman’s work are published in a variety of languages; ever new poets “reply” to him in their poetry; his poems are set to music and are quoted in films; he is invoked in the discussion of political and cultural issues as well as of gender and sexuality; and he continues to be a huge presence in college and university curricula globally.

In order to respond adequately to this international phenomenon The Transatlantic Walt Whitman Association sponsors a series of International Whitman Seminars, where students from different countries come together for intensive, credit-bearing classes taught by Whitman specialists from different countries.

The first seminar was held in Dortmund, Germany, in June 2008. The second will take place in Tours on 8-14 June, 2009. In the regular classes, focusing on some of Whitman’s major poems, students will have an opportunity to share and confront their readings of these poems and discuss their international significance in the 21^st century. In addition, there will be special presentations on the reception of Whitman in various countries and languages as well as other topics. This year’s instructors will be Marina Camboni, Università di Macerata, author of Utopia in the Present Tense: Walt Whitman and the Language of the New World, Ed Folsom, University of Iowa, editor of the Walt Whitman Quarterly Review and co-founder and editor of the Walt Whitman Archive, Jay Grossman, Northwestern University, author of Reconstituting the American Renaissance: Emerson, Whitman, and the Politics of Representation, and M. Wynn Thomas, University of Wales Swansea, author or The Lunar Light of Whitman’s Poetry. Students will also participate in the symposium held at the end of the week and featuring Whitman scholars from various countries.

Credits will be issued by the Université François-Rabelais. International visiting students will live with their French counterparts, thus keeping expenses as low as possible and creating opportunities for a meaningful intercultural dialogue. In addition to class work on Whitman and the symposium, students will be shown around the Loire Valley, which boasts the world’s largest concentration of Renaissance chateaux.

Application: 15 non-French international students will be accepted to the Week. Applications should include a curriculum-vitae, a one-page statement of interest in the Week, and a short letter of support by an instructor who knows the applicant. Applications should be sent to eric.athenot@orange.fr by 3 April 2009 at the latest.

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International Whitman Symposium: “Endlessly Rocking”
Université François-Rabelais, June 12-14, 2009

This year’s symposium will be devoted solely to “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking,” written by Whitman exactly a hundred a fifty years ago and first published under the title “A Child’s Reminiscence” in the 24 December 1859 edition of the New York Saturday Press. In 1881 it came to occupy its present prominent position in the “Sea-Drifts” section. This poem is remarkable for the way it mixes life and death, loss and poetic inspiration, universal laws and human categories. Papers are invited to cover a wide range of approaches to the poem, including the position this poem occupies in Whitman’s printed work and poetics, how it documents the poet’s practice of endlessly rewriting, and its debt to and departure from British Romanticism. Papers focusing on international responses to this poem, including translations into other languages, are also strongly encouraged.

Abstracts should be sent to Betsy Erkkila, Northwestern University (erkkila@northwestern.edu), and Marta Skwara, Uniwersytet Szczeci (martaskw@univ.szczecin.pl) by 15 March 2009.

Let the words be gazetted henceforth

Instructors from the 2008 Symposium (L to R):
Walter Grünzweig, Ed Folsom, Mario Corona, Betsy Erkkila, Éric Athenot

The blog is now officially an open forum: check back here for updates about the Association, announcements about Whitman resources and scholarship, and other Whitmania!

New blog under construction

After the TWWA’s first-ever Walt Whitman Seminar and International Walt Whitman Symposium — held at the Technische Universität Dortmund in Dortmund, Germany, from 15-22 June 2008 — the Association has found its official home in cyberspace. These pages are currently under construction, but please check back soon! Feel free to direct any comments or questions to the Association by emailing transatlantic.whitman [at] gmail.com.