“The Promise and Perils of Biography”

Conference on Friday, APRIL 30, 2010

—FREE ands OPEN to the PUBLIC

from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. in  room 430, suite 404,

1800 Sherman Ave., Evanston

Convener: Fernando CARBAJAL (CCHS Fellow)

9:30—9:35 Welcome by CCHS Director T. H. BREEN

 9:45—10:30 Keynote lecture by Alice KESSLER-HARRIS (Columbia University),

author of Out to Work: A History of Wage-Earning Women in the United States (1982), In Pursuit of Equity: Women, Men and the Quest for Economic Citizenship in Twentieth Century America (2001) and  Gendering Labor History (2007), as well as a forthcoming biography of American playwright Lillian Hellman, will speak on “The Ambivalent Biographer and her Subject”

11:00—1:00 p.m. Session I

Commentators: Rick PERLSTEIN (author of Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America, 2008) and Louise W. KNIGHT (author of Citizen:Jane Addams and the Struggle for Democracy, 2006)

• Fernando CARBAJAL (NU)—“On the Road with Martin Dies: In Search of Mid-Twentieth Century Conservatism and Historical Memory with the ‘Outstanding Zany in Our Political History’”

• Meghan ROBERTS (NU)—“Avoiding the Exceptional: Towards a Collective Biography of Enlightenment Philosophies”

1:00—2:00  Light lunch will be served

2:00—4:00 Session II: New Methodologies and the Future of Biography

Commentators: Rick PERLSTEIN (Independent Scholar) and Geraldo CADAVA (NU)

• Strother ROBERTS (NU)—“The Biography of a River? Considering the Value of Biography as a Tool for Environmental Studies”

•  Marcia HOLMES (University of Chicago)—“’The Making of Subjects of Biographical Experience': Scientific Biography and the Lives of Scientists”

• Molly MACKEAN (NU)—“’It Would Make Me Grieve/To Have To Leave’: A Biography of New Deal Towns Under Attack.”

4:00—5:00 Light reception

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“Emotions as History”

 Conference on Friday, MAY 14, 2010—FREE ands OPEN to the PUBLIC

from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.  in  room 430, suite 404, 1800 Sherman Ave., Evanston

Convener: Andreana PRICHARD (CCHS Fellow)

9:30—9:35 Welcome by CCHS Director T. H. BREEN

9:45—10:30 Keynote lecture by Dr. Kenda MUTONGI (Williams College),

author of Worries of the Heart: Widows, Family, and Community in Kenya (2007)—

"’I Felt It in My Gut’:  Fear and Anger Aboard a Matatu”

11:00—1:00 p.m. Session I:  Emotions as Sources:  Sadness, Love, Anger

Discussant: Dr. Barbara ROSENWEIN (Loyola University, Chicago)

• Erin-Marie LEGACEY (Northwestern University)--"A Day at the Cemetery: The Pursuit of Melancholy in Post-Revolutionary Paris"

• Andreana PRICHARD (Northwestern University)--"Love, Language, and National Belonging in Twentieth-Century Tanganyika"

• Joshua GRACE (Michigan State University)--"Socialism on Wheels: Passenger Anger and Urban Citizenship in Dar es Salaam’s City Buses,

      1960s and 1970s"

1:00—2:00  Light lunch will be served

2:00—4:00 Session II: The Discourse of Emotions

Discussant:  Dr. Dyan ELLIOTT (Northwestern University)

• Meghan ROBERTS (Northwestern University)—"Sentimentalism and Intellectual Authority in Eighteenth-century France"

• Noah BLAN (Northern Illinois University)—"The Material Culture of Emotions in the Carolingian Lay Mirrors"

• Kaitlin PONTER (Loyola University, Chicago)—"Conduct of Enemies: Passions and Tory Partisan Discourse in the War of Spanish Succession"

4:00—5:00 Light reception