The UConn Puppet Arts Program and the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry at the University of Connecticut present a "Colloquium with Jane Bennett" on Friday, Feb. 21, from 9 a.m. to noon at the UConn Humanities Institute on the 4th floor of UConn’s Homer Babbidge Library.
The colloquium will include research presentations by UConn scholars including Associate Professor of English Kathleen Tonry, who will consider connections between Jane Bennett’s work and the 15th-century history of the book; Professor of Art History Elizabeth Athens, who will consider 18th-century naturalist William Bartram’s representations of nature; and Ballard Institute Director John Bell, who will examine Jane Bennett’s influence on contemporary puppetry studies. The presentations will also include short puppet responses to Walt Whitman poems by students in Dr. Matthew Cohen’s Hand Puppetry class. The colloquium offers an opportunity to engage in conversation about Walt Whitman and American poetry, political theory, puppetry studies, object-oriented ontology, and philosophy with Dr. Bennett. This event is free and open to the public.
Co-sponsored by UConn’s departments of Philosophy, Political Science, and English, the UConn Humanities Institute, and UConn’s American Studies program.
Jane Bennett is Andrew W. Mellon Professor of the Humanities, in the Department of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Her recent essays have appeared in "Grain/Vapor/Ray" (on Kafka's Odradek), "Evental Aesthetics" (special issue on Vital Materialism), and "MLN" (on mimesis). She is the author of "Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things" (2010); "The Enchantment of Modern Life" (2001); "Thoreau's Nature" (1994), and "Unthinking Faith and Enlightenment" (1987). Her forthcoming book this spring is called "Influx & Efflux: Writing up with Walt Whitman."
This event is free and open to the public. For more information or if you require an accommodation to attend the colloquium, please contact Dr. Matthew Cohen at matthew.i.cohen@uconn.edu.
For more information, contact: Dr. Matthew Cohen at matthew.i.cohen@uconn.edu