Literature of Exile explored in final Brown Bag May 4
 Carmen Rivera will moderate the discussion on writers in exile. |
The literature of writers in exile is often nostalgic and laced with the voices of deeply affected individuals who try to imagine their countries as they hope them to one day be. In its final event this semester, the Arts & Humanities Brown Bag Lecture Series at SUNY Fredonia will explore the literature of exile in a panel discussion titled, “Imaginary Countries: Writers Re-imagining their Nations from Exile.”
It will feature professors who have researched writers from three very different countries and explored how their experience in exile and sometimes torture has affected their writing.
On Wednesday, May 4, from noon to 1 p.m. in room S-104 of the Williams Center, Dr. Birger Vanwesenbeeck, Dr. Iclal Vanwesenbeeck, both of the English department, will join Dr. Juan De Urda of the department of Modern Languages and Literatures to explore the effects that exile has had on select writers and their literature. Dr. Carmen Rivera, Chair of the department of Modern Languages and Literatures, will moderate the discussion.
The event is free and open to the public. Students, in particular, are encouraged to stay after the lecture for a 30-minute informal conversation with some of the featured speakers. Dessert will be provided.
Dr. Juan De Urda is an assistant professor of Modern Languages and Literatures who is interested in 20th century peninsular literature and Spanish poetry. His lecture, “Equatorial Guinea: Ways of Looking Back,” will focus on the literature of Equatorial Guinea and how it has been a literature of exile and nostalgia, constructing and re-creating the country from time and distance.
Dr. Birger Vanwesenbeeck is an assistant professor of English whose research and teaching interests lie in modernism, postmodernism and world literature. His talk, “Epistolary Modernism: Zweig’s Letter from an Unknown Woman,” will be focused around the idea that the letter, and not the memoir, is the literary form that is most endemic to exile. Dr. Vanwesenbeeck’s presentation will also discuss the significance of this resurfacing of the epistolary form, both in Zweig’s novella and in Jewish-Austrian modernist literature.
Dr. Iclal Vanwesenbeeck is also an assistant professor of English, and she is interested in early modern theories of tyranny, political philosophy and Turkish literature. Her talk, “Nazim Hikmet on Exile: the Gaze of the Blue Eyed Muse,” will focus on the monumental writings of this Turkish poet who composed numerous epics and poems during his years of imprisonment and exile.
Dr. Carmen Rivera is Chair and Professor of Modern Languages and Literatures. The author of Kissing the Mango Tree: Puerto Rican Women Rewriting American Literature (2002), she specializes in Latino studies and has written articles about issues of immigration, transculturation and cultural identity..
To learn more, contact series co-director Natalie Gerber at gerber@fredonia.edu or 716-673-3125, or visit www.fredonia.edu/brownbag.
Since 2004, The Arts and Sciences Brown Bag Lecture Series, sponsored by the Fredonia College Foundation’s Carnahan-Jackson Humanities Fund and the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, has offered free monthly talks showcasing scholarly and creative work by SUNY Fredonia faculty, staff, students, and community partners. These talks provide an opportunity for intellectual conversations across disciplinary boundaries and seek to create a broad and vigorous community of learners on our campus.
