Poetics & the University in Crisis
Friday, March 5–Sunday, March 7 / 3:00–7:00 P.M.
featuring 22 poets, critics, teachers, artists
free registration required; click here

A virtual colloquy on the role of poetics in the American university in crisis, for a nation also in crisis. The humanities and arts continue to be major targets of increasingly austere budgets—and so, too, has critical thinking. How can poetics—as inventive, intellectually engaged creative series of practices and modalities of thought—offer an intervention into this moment? How can the university re-embrace the necessity of art based in critical thinking and open inquiry that includes the aesthetic and the political? The three days of this colloquy will aim to unite creative poetic practices with analytical critique and pedagogy from a wide range of voices, methods, points of view.

Program

Day 1 Friday, March 5

3 p.m. Introduction
Laura Hinton

3:15–4:45 p.m.
A. Why Poetics?: Intellectual Resistance & Academic Histories
Laura Hinton, moderator

Barrett Watten, “Poetics: Origin and Descent”
David Lau, “Red Decade?: Platforms of Post-Crisis Poetics”
Lyn Hejinian, “The Poetics Event: Critical Thinking in a Time against Thinking”

5:00–6:30 p.m.
B. ‘The Center Will Not Hold’: Universities & Neoliberal Politics
Aldon Lynn Nielsen, moderator

David Grundy, “Poetry, the University, & Defeat”
Conor Tomás Reed, “CUNY Feminist Poetic Pedagogies and/as Adjunct Labor”
Laura Hinton, “The Retro Social Order of Neoliberal U; or, Academic Mobbing & the Feminist-Poetics ‘Outsider’”

6:30 p.m. Q & A / Audience Discussion

Day 2 Saturday, March 6

3:00–4:30 p.m.
C. Outside / Inside / Moving On from University Structures
Barrett Watten, moderator

Charles Alexander, “Inside / Outside: The Small Poetry Press & the Academy”
Susan Mohini Kane, “Rediscovering Living Art by Stepping Outside the University”
Joe Harrington, “Poetry in the Ruins; or, Confessions of a Bad Academic at a Time Very Near the End of the School”

4:45–5:45 p.m.
D. Visual Poetics & Critical Art Practices
Carla Harryman, moderator

Abigail Child, “The Return of Spectacle to Hardscrabble Road”
Joanna Fuhrman, “Two Poetry Videos: ‘Are We Having Fun Yet?’ & ‘The Adjunct Commuter’”

6:00–7:30 p.m.
E. What I Can No Longer Teach
Lauri Scheyer, moderator

Carla Harryman, “Why I Can No Longer Teach Kathy Acker.”
Tyrone Williams, “Pan-Africanism Dies Again: The Stone Virgins v. Black Women”
Herman Rapaport, “The Poetics of Écriture”

7:30 p.m. Q & A / Open Bar, Open Discussion on Poetics / the University / What IS the Crisis?

Day 3 Sunday, March 7

3:00–4:30 p.m.
F. Race, Poetics, & the University: A Conversation
Lauri Scheyer
Tyrone Williams
Aldon Lynn Nielsen
Duriel E. Harris
Geoffrey Jacques

4:45–6:30 p.m.
G. Managing the “Managed” University: Mental Health, Self-Care, & Poetics
Laura Hinton and Aldon Lynn Nielson, moderators

Susan M. Schultz, “The Language of Care in (My) Neoliberal University”
Deirdre Osborne, “Tears in the Classroom”: Politicized Poetics & Poeticized Politics
Carlyn Ferrari, “Feelings on Poetics, Pedagogy, and a Pandemic”
James McCorkle, “Field Notes towards Trans*formation”

6:30 p.m. Conclusion & Final Discussion
Barrett Watten, moderator

Notes and links

Sponsored by Chant de la Sirène—Journal of Poetics & the Hybrid Arts
program updates @ https://www.chantdelasirenejournal.com/special-events

for more information, contact barrett.watten@gmail.com