Upcoming Events
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October 11, 2023, 3:00pm
Works-in-Progress Series: Prof. Joel Dinerstein
Norman Mayer 118
October 26, 2023, 7:00pm
The Josephine Gessner Ferguson Lecture: Dr. James Shapiro, Columbia University: "Macbeth in Harlem: the Making of the Federal Theatre's Greatest Hit"
Rogers Memorial Chapel, Reception to Follow
November 8, 2023, 5:00pm
Works-in-Progress Series: Prof. Ebony Perro
Norman Mayer 118
November 29, 2023, 3:00pm
Works-in-Progress Series: Prof. Karen Zumhagen-Yekplé
Norman Mayer 118
Past Events
April 20, 2023, 6:00pm
The Josephine Gessner Ferguson Lecture: Julia Reinhard Lupton, The University of California at Irvine
March 10, 2023, 2:30pm
Ray Ryan: Publishing in the Humanities
Gibson 126A
Dr. Ray Ryan is the author of several books and has been serving as Publisher, English and American Literature, at Cambridge University Press. He will talk on publishing research in The Humanities generally, with a focus on literary studies
March 7, 2023, 4:00pm
Geoffrey Galt Harpham: Race: The Theory
Gibson Hall 126A
The Department of English invites the Tulane Community and the Public to a Lecture by Geoffrey Harpham. In his lecture titled, "Race: The Theory," he will be speaking about the experience of creating an archive of those texts, and indicating some of the conclusions that can be drawn from it.
March 2, 2023, 6:00pm
Chris Eng: Reading for Camp: Queer Extravagance within Constraint
Rogers Memorial Chapel
Join the Department of English, Asian Studies, GESS, and the Newcomb College Institute for a talk from Dr. Chris Eng that asks, "What might it mean to camp up the camps that appear throughout Asian American histories?"
February 23, 2023, 6:00pm
Rac(e)ing the Shakespearean Archive Keynote Address
Reception in Newcomb Hall 114 at 5:00pm and Lecture in Rogers Memorial Chapel
Kara Tucina Olidge, Associate Director for Collections and Discovery at the Getty Research Center, and Ayanna Thompson, Regents Professor of English at Arizona State University and Director of the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at ASU, will engage in a keynote dialogue on the topic of race and Shakespeare. They will discuss this topic in relation to the cultural history of New Orleans, the South, and America generally and in the context of the collecting, archival study, and performance of Shakespeare’s works. This event is co-sponsored with the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC.
February 6, 2023, 6:00pm
Gaurav Desai: Crabs that Rule the Tide of Destiny: Imagining the Ecotone in Amitav Ghosh's The Hungry Tide
Stibbs (#203) in Lavin-Bernick Center
This Talk is presented as part of the Carole Barnette Boudreaux '65 Great Writers Series which will bring Amitav Ghosh to campus for a public lecture on March 15, 2023. Ghosh's The Hungry Tide set in the ecotonal region of the Sunderbans of Bengal, first published in India by Ravi Dayal in 2004, has, in the nearly two decade since its publication, become one of the “go-to” texts for literary scholars interested in bringing an eco-critical and environmental perspective to the study of postcolonial literatures. In this paper, I touch on some of the readings it has generated but more importantly on a few aspects that call for a re-reading especially in the light of some of the work that has followed, including Ghosh's own The Great Derangement and The Nutmeg's Curse.
November 2, 2022
Works-in-Progress Series: Prof. Ed White
The Department of English is excited to begin a new Works-in-Progress Speaker Series with Prof. Ed White sharing his work-in-progress, "Missing Paths in Literary History," on November 2, 2022, in Norman Mayer 101 at 5:00 pm.
November 9, 2022
Works-in-Progress Series: Prof. Bernice McFadden
The English Department presents the second in our works-in-progress series with Prof. Bernice McFadden presenting her work-in-progress, First Born Girls, on November 9, 2022, in Norman Mayer 101 at 5:00 pm.
October 12, 2022
Poetry Event: Dr. Niyi Osundare and Dr. Bouchaib Gadir
An evening of poetry featuring Dr. Niyi Osundare and Dr. Bouchaib Gadir, Senior Professor of Practice in Arabic Studies at Tulane University. It will be held at 6:00 pm on Wednesday, October 12th at Freeman Auditorium (205 Woldenberg).
Dr. Osundare is Emeritus Distinguished Professor of English at the University of New Orleans. His work has earned the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA) Prize, the Noma Award (Africa's most prestigious book award), the Tchicaya U Tam’si Award for African Poetry, and the Fonlon/Nichols Award for "excellence in literary creativity combined with significant contributions to Human Rights in Africa," among other notable recognition. His poem ‘Raindrum’ was selected as Nigeria’s contribution to the cultural events complementing the 2012 London Olympics, and was featured in a special series celebrating The Games.
This event is hosted by Arabic Studies, and sponsored by the English Department, the Germanic & Slavic Department, and the New Orleans Center for the Gulf South.
September 16, 2022
Rethinking Early Modern English and Spanish Religious Texts: A Conversation with Debora Shuger and Dale Shuger
A Book Talk and Conversation co-hosted by the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and the Department of English with Prof. Dale Shuger of Tulane and Prof. Debora Shuger of UCLA on their recently published books.
March 21, 2022
Professor Qiana Whitted will headline the 2022 English Undergraduate Colloquium. Her public talk, All-New, All-Negro: Orrin C. Evans and the Golden Age of Comics, will take place on Monday, March 21 at 6pm in Rogers Chapel.
Dr. Whitted is a Professor of English and the Director of African American Studies at Univeristy of South Carolina. She is the editor of Inks: The Journal of the Comics Studies Society, and author and editor of numerous books including EC Comics: Race, Shock, and Social Protest (Rutgers 2019).
April 11, 2022
Tiphanie Yanique, novelist, poet, essayist, and short story writer, as the Boudreaux Emerging Writers Series' guest speaker. Author of Monster in the Middle, Land of Love and Drowning , and How to Escape from a Leper Colony. Monday, April 11, 2022 in Rogers Memorial Chapel at 7pm.
April 14, 2022
Please join the Tulane University English Department for its 2022 Josephine Gessner Ferguson lecture on Thursday evening, April 14, at 7:00pm in Stone Auditorium on the Tulane campus. Our lecturer will be Barry McCrea, the Donald R. Keogh Family Professor of Irish Studies in the Department of English at the University of Notre Dame. Professor McCrea is a prize-winning novelist and prestigious scholar of modern European, Latin-American, and Irish literature. He will be speaking about place and the experience of migration in the great modernist novels of James Joyce and Marcel Proust, and about how ideas like home and exile shape literary narratives.
March 7-9, 2022
Brit Bennett as the 2022 Zale-Kimmerling writer-in-residence. Public reading and interview will be on March 7. We will likely be offering course development grants in the fall to faculty interested in incorporating her work into a class and having her do a class visit while she is here. More info to come.
November 17, 2021
Simeon Marsalis, New York writer who earned his MFA in 2019 from Rutgers University-Newark. His first novel, As Lie Is to Grin, was published by Catapult in 2017 and was shortlisted for the Center for Fiction's first novel prize. His short story, "The Exterminator," appears in the Fall 2021 Founders' Issue of Lampblack, a magazine and literary organization that he helped to co-found. Marsalis is working on his second novel, End Times, and is currently a part-time lecturer in the English Department at Rutgers University-Newark.
Public reading, conversation with Professor Lazar, and a Q&A portion, 11/17 at 7:00pm, Stone Auditorium.
For more information, call the English Department at 504-865-5160.
November 7-8, 2021
Khadijah Queen as the Arons visiting poet. A public reading on the evening of November 8 and a small workshop for students on November 7. Khadijah is the author of seven books; her most recent is Anodyne (Tin House Books, 2020).
September 21, 2021
Yaa Gyasi: Transcendent Kingdom – Reading Project Selection. Public talk Tuesday 9 /21 5:30 Dixon Hall
March 4, 2021
Tyrone Palmer, post-doctoral fellow in the Society of Fellows in the Humanities, Columbia University. Guest speaker for ENLS 7780-01 Contemporary African American Literature and Black Critical Theory, Selamawit Terrefe.
Talk titled "Feeling-as-Capture".
This talk considers Dionne Brand’s 2001 experimental memoir A Map to the Door of No Return: Notes to Belonging, arguing that the text theorizes the gulf between Blackness and the World as rooted in the question of affective experience. I read Brand’s deployment of the concept-metaphor of “the Door” and its attendant “tear in the world” as indexing the chasm from which Black feeling outside of and against “the World” as relational container irrupts. Brand’s text reveals that rather than offering an escape from meaning-as-capture, when considered from the position of Blackness, feeling is capture, and it is this seemingly paradoxical state of things that renders Black affect aporetic.
March 17, 2021
Lisa Woolfork, Associate Professor of English and Co-Chair of the Center for Liberal Arts, University of Virginia. Guest speaker for ENLS 7720-01 Black Women Writer Long 19th Century, Kate Adams. Discussion of Embodying Slavery
April 7, 2021
Irvin J. Hunt, Assistant Professor of English, African American Studies, and Interpretive Theory at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Guest speaker for ENLS 7720-02 Black Women Writer Long 19th Century, Kate Adams. Discussion of “Planned Failure”.
April 19, 2021
Zoë Henry, Ph.D. candidate, Indiana University Bloomington. Guest speaker for ENLS 7760-01 Modern American Literature: Living the Apocalypse, Erin Kappeler. The talk is titled “‘I am Speaking’: A Reappraisal of Critique in Times of Crisis.”
April 13, 2021
April 13, 2021
Sayan Bhattarcharya, Ph.D. Candidate, University of Minnesota: " Memory as an Act of Care: Towards a Decolonial Politics of Queerness" for ENLS 7140, Cheryl Naruse.
April 29, 2021
Joy James, Ebenezer Fitch Professor of the Humanities, Williams College. Guest Speaker for Selamawit D. Terrefe's ENLS 7780-01, Contemporary African American Literature & Black Critical Theory. Title of talk: '"What is to be Done?": A Query for the "Beloved Community."'
May 4, 2021
Aiko Yamashiro, Director for Hawai'i Humanities Council: "Indigenous and Postcolonial Theories: Origins, Actions, and How we Feel in the Doing" for ENLS 7140, Cheryl Naruse.
Spring 2017
The Dayton Literary Peace Prize Panel:
"Bridge to Understanding - A discussion on Systemic Racism in America"
Moderated by Bernice L. McFadden, Author and Tulane Professor
Date: Tuesday, April 4, 2017
Time: 6:00pm - 8:00pm
Location: Freeman Auditorium, Woldenberg Art CenterFree and open to the public.
The 28th Annual Josephine Gessner Ferguson Lecture:
"Two Professors, 'Busting' the German Code, and a Landmark Edition of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales"
Featuring Christina von Nolcken (University of Chicago)
Date: Thursday, April 20, 2017
Time: 6:00PM
Location: Freeman Auditorium, Woldenberg Art Center
Free and open to the public.
Delivered annually in late March or early April, the Josephine Gessner Ferguson Lecture is the only endowed lecture in the Tulane English department. It was established by Charles Ferguson and Barbara Ferguson Ginsberg in memory of their mother, Josephine, who was a student of English Literature at Newcomb College in Tulane University. Although it began as a lecture devoted exclusively to19th-century British literature, the Ferguson Lecture now considers literature from any of the traditional British periods.
Spring 2016
27th Annual Josephine Gessner Ferguson Lecture "Shakespeare in America"
Featuring James Shapiro (Columbia University)
Date: Thursday, April 28, 2016
Time: 6:00 PM
Location: Freeman Auditorium, Woldenberg Art Center
Delivered annually in late March or early April, the Josephine Gessner Ferguson Lecture is the only endowed lecture in the Tulane English department. It was established by Charles Ferguson and Barbara Ferguson Ginsberg in memory of their mother, Josephine, who was a student of English Literature at Newcomb College in Tulane University. Although it began as a lecture devoted exclusively to19th-century British literature, the Ferguson Lecture now considers literature from any of the traditional British periods.
First Folio! Exhibition Grand Opening
Includes a Jazz Funeral for Shakespeare, conducted by Michael White and the Liberty Brass Band
Date: Monday, May 9, 2016
Time: 6:30 PM
Location: Newcomb Hall, Newcomb Art Museum
First Folio! The exhibition opens on the Tulane campus with a Jazz Funeral for Shakespeare, conducted by Michael White and the Liberty Brass Band, 6:30 pmhttp://newcombartmuseum.tulane.edu/portfolio-item/shakespeare-first-folio/http://firstfolio.tulane.edu
Parking Information:
https://newcombartmuseum.tulane.edu/parking/
First Folio! HIGH SCHOOL TEACHER WORKSHOP
conducted by Scott Oldenburg (Associate Professor, English Department, Tulane University)
Date: Sunday, May 15, 2016
Time: 1:00 PM - 3:00 PM
Location: Newcomb Art Museum
Open to the public, to participate, contact the English Department, Tulane University, (504) 865-5160
Sonnets in the Gallery Poetry Reading
featuring Peter Cooley (Professor, English Department, Tulane University and Poet Laureate of the State of Louisiana)
Date: Monday, May 16, 2016
Time: 1:00 PM - 3:00 PM
Location: Newcomb Art Museum
Open to the public, to participate, contact the English Department, Tulane University, (504)865-5160
Past Event Highlights
A memorial service for Caecilia Davis-Weyer, Professor emerita of Medieval Art History at Tulane
A Reading by the Creative Writing Faculty: Thomas Beller, Peter Cooley, Zachary Lazar, and Jesmyn Ward
A Reading by Robert Stone
A Reading by Chang-rae Lee
Michael Ondaatje & Linda Saplding
Ferguson Lecture: Mark Samuels Lasner
Jericho Brown
A.S. Byatt
Josephine Gessner Ferguson Lecture: Ian Baucom
Poet Laureate Series: Robert Hass
Writers Writer Series: James Salter
Great Writers Series: Michael Ondaatje
Pierce Butler Chair Lecture: Robert Douglas-Fairhurst
Remembering Katrina: A 5th Anniversary Poetry Reading
Great Writers Series: Carlos Fuentes
Poet Laureate Series: Rita Dove
Writer's Writer Series: Edmund White
Writer's Writer Series: Deborah Eisenberg
Less-Than-Secret Lives: A Symposium on the Personal Essay
Great Writers Series: Joan Didion
Poet Laureate Series: Billy Collins
African Writers Symposium