English

Join UCLA English for a book discussion and reception to celebrate Professor Justin Torres and his new novel, Blackouts. Blackouts is a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction, and has been named A Most Anticipated Read by The New York Times, The Guardian, Literary Hub, The Rumpus, The Bay Area Reporter, Datebook, Electric Literature, The Stacks, Them, and Publishers Weekly. Register here to attend the event. Creative writing colleagues Fred D’Aguiar, Mona Simpson and Xuan Juliana Wang will lead the discussion. Light refreshments will follow the event. Please join us to celebrate Justin and his new work! Synopsis:...

This talk joins in the recent resurgence of critical interest in the mid-century international movement known as Concrete Poetry. Using research in cognitive science, Jessica Luck shows how many concrete poems work to expose and confound the brain’s letterbox and other tools that lie at the foundation of our ability to read. The talk is derived from chapter four of Jessica Luck’s new book Poetics of Cognition: Thinking through Experimental Poems (Iowa Press, 2023). Register here to attend. Jessica Luck is department chair and professor of English at California State University, San Bernardino.

This seminar is centered around a work-in-progress book chapter exploring impairment and disability in early medieval England, as well as an accompanying case study on the Lives of St Guthlac of Crowland. The seminar will be a chance to offer feedback on the piece and to discuss the insights the field of disability studies has to offer scholars of the early Middle Ages. Register here to attend. Professor Batten will also deliver an afternoon lecture at 4:00pm in Kaplan Hall 193. See event details here: Whole, Holy, Healthy: Sickness and the Body in the Medieval North Atlantic. Both events are co-sponsored...

What does it mean, culturally speaking, to get sick? What makes a body healthy? This talk explores depictions of disease in medical remedies and healing charms from the medieval North Atlantic, a multilingual zone of intensive cultural interaction and exchange. These vivid texts allow us to better understand how medieval people thought about their own bodies and about the place of humanity in a hostile world – deconstructing cultural anxieties and fantasies around the idea of an individuated, embodied self. Register here to attend. The talk will be followed by a Q & A moderated by Erica Weaver, assistant professor...