CHF Chicago Humanities Festival

Panel

  • E-Mail
    (e.g. amandasmith@gmail.com)

    (Please separate multiple email addresses with commas.)

    (You may use or edit the message above.)

  • PRINT

  • Share

  • TEXT SIZE
The Great American Novel, Revisited

The Great American Novel, Revisited

 Launch Media

ABOUT 

Literary scholars Nicholas Delbanco (University of Michigan), Morris Dickstein (City University of New York), Wendy Steiner (University of Pennsylvania), and Kenneth Warren (University of Chicago) and theater director John Collins (Elevator Repair Service) debate the existence and complexities of the great American novel.  Bill Savage (Northwestern University) moderates.

  • ABOUT John Collins

    John Collins helped found the acclaimed experimental theater ensemble Elevator Repair Service in 1991. ERS builds its pieces around a wide range of form and content, combining elements of slapstick comedy, hi-tech and lo-tech design, both literary and found text, found objects and discarded furniture, and the group's own highly developed choreography. Their productions include Gatz (2005), a marathon presentation of the entire text of The Great Gatsby, and The Sound and the Fury (April Seventh, 1928) (2008). Profile

  • ABOUT Nicholas Delbanco

    Nicholas Delbanco, University of Michigan professor of literature and language, has written more than twenty books. He has also served as Chair of the Fiction Panel for the National Book Awards and is a two-time recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Writing Fellowship. His novel The Count of Concord came out in 2008. Profile

  • ABOUT Morris Dickstein

    Morris Dickstein is a literary and cultural critic and Distinguished Professor of English at the City University of New York Graduate Center. He is senior fellow of the Center for the Humanities, which he directed from 1993 to 2000. He has also taught at Columbia and Queens College. He is the author of Gates of Eden: American Culture in the Sixties, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle award in criticism. Profile

  • ABOUT Bill Savage

    Bill Savage is a senior lecturer in English at Northwestern University. He co-edited the 50th anniversary critical edition of Algren's The Man with the Golden Arm and the newly annotated edition of Chicago: City on the Make. In addition, he is a series editor for Chicago Visions + Revisions. Savage is the recipient of the James Friend Memorial Award in Literary Criticism from the Society of Midland Authors, and the 2004-2005 Distinguished Teaching Award from Northwestern's School for Continuing Studies.

    Profile

  • ABOUT Wendy Steiner

    Wendy Steiner is the Founding Director of the Penn Humanities Forum and the Richard L. Fisher Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of numerous books focusing on literature, visual arts, contemporary art and ethical issues in art. Her essays have been published in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times and The Nation. Profile
Click next to learn more...

1 of 1

Even the aspiration to write the great American novel…is now disappearing. So, I think we’re dealing with a dodo here.       

Click play to listen. Recorded on November 1, 2008.

The idea of The Great American Novel—that all-defining American literary work—has fixated generations of writers and readers. When and how did this notion enter our national cultural life? Is it a uniquely American preoccupation—or a distinctly male one? Is the pursuit of this white whale of American letters a silly and meaningless exercise? 

Panelists discuss the beginnings of the great American novel and its goal of encompassing all regions, people and social issues of America. Conversation steers to the differences in American literary tradition compared to English literature and how the notion of a sweeping national novel is uniquely American. What are the criteria of the great American novel? Is the whole concept just a myth?

Tags

fiction, literary criticism, cultural studies, American history, national pursuit, theatrical adaptations

Learn More

Similar Programs

big

chf feature

Thinking Big!

Conversation

Jonathan Lethem: Writers on the Record with Victoria Lautman

Novelist Jonathan Lethem discusses Chronic City and chronicling Gen X angst with interviewer Victoria Lautman, host and producer of WFMT’s Writers on the Record.

Lecture

Julia Stern: The Great Gatsby Classics in Context

Northwestern University professor Julia Stern offers new perspective on the beloved classic The Great Gatsby.
Support CHF - Donate Now

Festival Sponsors

© Copyright 2012 Chicago Humanities Festival