- This event has passed.
Graduate Lunch Workshop: Caleb Smith
Join UCLA English on Tuesday, May 26 and Thursday, May 28 for the Barbara L. Packer lectures featuring Caleb Smith, professor of English and American Studies at Yale University. In addition to his formal lectures, Professor Smith will lead a graduate workshop on Wednesday, May 27. All events include a light lunch. An RSVP is required to attend the lectures and graduate workshop. Please RSVP at the link below.
Register here to attend the lectures and graduate workshop.
About the lecturers:
Ancient speech acts like confession, disavowal, and testimony have strange afterlives in modern, secular culture. Smith’s lectures reflect on how we use these rituals and what kind of justice we want from them.
Lectures and Graduate Workshop Schedule:
“On Disavowal”: Tuesday, May 26 at 12:30pm. A light lunch will be served at 12pm.
“On Disavowal,” is an essay in the genealogy of morals, tracing the development of disavowal from religious and legal ceremonies through psychoanalysis to contemporary political rhetoric and critical theory.
Graduate Workshop: Wednesday, May 27 at 12:00pm. Lunch provided.
Graduate students and faculty are welcome to attend a lunch workshop with Professor Smith.
“Revenge Vows”: Thursday, May 28 at 12:30pm. A light lunch will be served at 12pm.
“Revenge Vows,” takes up a case study from nineteenth-century American literature, Charles Chesnutt’s “The Dumb Witness” (1897), where a testifying voice becomes an instrument of binding punishment.
Caleb Smith is professor of English and American Studies at Yale University, where he teaches courses in American literature, cultural history, and critical theory. His books include The Prison and the American Imagination (Yale University Press, 2009); The Oracle and the Curse (Harvard University Press, 2013); and the first published edition of Austin Reed’s 1858 prison memoir, The Life and the Adventures of a Haunted Convict (Random House, 2016). His latest, Thoreau’s Axe: Distraction and Discipline in American Culture, appeared from Princeton University Press in 2023.
Questions about the events?
Contact Marta Wallien: mwallien@english.ucla.edu
