Conference to explore high and popular culture

The very symbiotic relationship between haute and popular culture will be examined at a two-day conference on Thursday and Friday, Sept. 30 and Oct. 1.

“Popular Pleasures: A Symposium on the Intersection of Literature and Popular Culture” will investigate how culture and literature have influenced each other from medieval times through the 19th century.

“Because the study of popular culture has focused so much on the 20th and 21st centuries, we wanted to use our inaugural symposium to explore popular culture in earlier time periods,” says Andrea Gronstal Benton, chair of the conference organizing committee and a Ph.D. candidate in English.

Scholars from UW–Madison, Northwestern University, the University of Illinois-Champagne/Urbana and Indiana University will take part in the proceedings. The UW–Madison contingent includes Caroline Levine, associate professor of English, who will discuss her new book, “The Serious Pleasures of Victorian Suspense: Scientific Knowledge and Popular Fiction.” (See Book Smart, this page.) In addition, David Zimmerman, assistant professor of English, will address the relationship between slave markets and stock markets in popular travel writing, including that of Mark Twain.

Graduate students from the department will present findings on such subjects as the use of the popular jig dance in Elizabethan theater, servant literacy in 18th century England, and identity as reflected in 19th century British and American periodicals.

Jacques Lezra, professor of English and Spanish and director of graduate studies in the Department of English, says that this conference has been designed, organized and carried out entirely by graduate students, adding a particularly valuable component to their education.

“The symposium provides an occasion for the students to take what they are learning in their seminars, cast an eye about the profession and come up with ideas for topics, speakers, venues, funding streams — a range of practical avenues into the discipline of literary studies,” he says. “Students also get an enormous amount of exposure. In addition, they are able to identify and interact with scholars at the forefront of studies in literature. The important dovetailing of theoretical, content-based graduate instruction with this hands-on experience provides the graduate community with a wonderfully comprehensive sense of what it means to study and teach literature at the university today.”

“We hope that the wide range of topics and time periods at this year’s first conference will be the genesis for another exciting symposium next fall and annually thereafter,” Benton says.

The presentations will begin on Friday, Oct. 1, at 9:15 a.m. at the Pyle Center. The symposium will open Sept. 30 with the first annual Peter Straub Distinguished Lecture at 4:30 p.m. (see sidebar). All events are free and open to the public. For more information, contact Benton, 263-2050, algronstal@wisc.edu.