Distinguished Voices in Literature, Spring 2024
Elizabeth Weybright
Van Burd Memorial Lecture: “Jane’s Ear: Auditory Subjectivity in Charlotte Brontë’s Fiction”
Friday, March 1, 2024
Old Main Colloquium (220)
4:30 p.m.
In this talk, I examine Charlotte Brontë’s depiction of her heroine in Jane Eyre as an active listener during moments of significant psychological growth. I find that Brontë approaches aurality as a mode of encounter that is both cerebral and profoundly embodied, making her fiction an important and underappreciated contribution to Victorian discourses around acoustics and the science of sound.
Dr. Elizabeth Weybright received a PhD in English from the Graduate Center, CUNY, where her research won an Alumni and Faculty Prize for Most Distinguished Dissertation of the Year in 2022. Her ongoing book project positions women writers as key interlocutors in discourses surrounding acoustic science and musical aesthetics during the long nineteenth century. She is also currently at work on a project examining amateur music culture in the British empire with particular interest in the musical lives of colonial subjects during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Dr. Weybright’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in The European Romantic Review, Romantic Circles Praxis, The Rambling, and a volume on Nineteenth-Century Literature in Transition: The 1800's, forthcoming from Cambridge University Press. She teaches in the English Department and First-Year Experience program at Barnard College.
This event has been made possible by the generous support of: The President’s Office, the Haines Fund, the Provost’s Office, the Institutional Equity and Inclusion Office, the Cultural and Intellectual Climate Committee, ASC, the Center for Gender and Intercultural Studies, the Center for Ethics Peace and Social Justice, the Philosophy Department, and the English Department.
For questions, please contact
Hai-Dang Phan
Wednesday, April 24, 5 pm
Old Main 220
Poet, translator, and essayist Hai-Dang Phan was born in Vietnam and raised in Wisconsin. He is the author of the poetry collection Reenactments (Sarabande, 2019) and the translator of Phan Nhiên Hạo’s selected volume of poems, Paper Bells (The Song Cave, 2020). His writing has appeared in numerous publications, including Best American Poetry 2016, New England Review, The New Yorker, Poetry, Asymptote, Bennington Review, and The Baffler. Phan is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and the American Literary Translators Association. He earned a Ph.D. in literary studies from the University of Wisconsin and an M.F.A. in creative writing from the University of Florida. Phan currently teaches creative writing, multi-ethnic American literatures, and environmental writing at Grinnell College. An avid birdwatcher, he is currently working on a book of literary nonfiction called Operation Laughingthrush, about the entangled life histories of humans and birds, the conservation ethic in Vietnam, and a Vietnamese American writer’s search for belonging. He lives in Iowa City.
This event has been made possible by the generous support of: The President’s Office, the Haines Fund, the Provost’s Office, the Institutional Equity and Inclusion Office, the Cultural and Intellectual Climate Committee, ASC, the Center for Ethics Peace and Social Justice, the Philosophy Department, the Writing Center, and the English Department.
For questions, please contact