|
"Walt Whitman, a kosmos"
A Conference at the National Portrait Gallery
9:00 AM - 12:00 PM
McEvoy Auditorium
National Portrait Gallery
All Ages
The poet Walt Whitman came to Washington, D.C., in 1862 to find his wounded brother. He stayed for the remainder of the Civil War. In its crucible, he confronted, personally and poetically, the division of the nation and its people. Whitman emerged from the Civil War both a stronger and a deeper poet.
On January 26, 2007, the National Portrait Gallery will present a conference on Walt Whitman that focuses on this pivotal moment in the poet’s life and writing.
Speakers and topics include Sean Wilentz, Bancroft Prizeâ€"winning professor of history at Princeton University, on Whitman and democracy; Alexander Nemerov, professor of art history at Yale University, on Whitman’s war poems; and Michael Schmidt, poet, director of Carcanet Press, and Professor of Poetry, University of Glasgow, on Whitman and the British. Jorie Graham, Pulitzer Prizeâ€"winning poet and Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard University, will accompany a reading of Whitman’s poems with commentary. The conference will be moderated by David C. Ward, historian at the National Portrait Gallery and curator of the exhibition “One Life: Walt Whitman, a kosmos.”
The conference is open to the public and will be held in the Nan Tucker McEvoy Auditorium at the Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture, Eighth and G streets, N.W., Washington, D.C. To register for this free conference, send your name, address, telephone number and e-mail to parlierg@si.edu with "Whitman Conference Registration" as the subject line of your e-mail. You may also register by phone at (202) 275-1760. Visit npg.si.edu or reynoldscenter.org for more information.
|
