COLL Poetry Beyond: “Passages: The Robert Duncan Centennial Conference in Paris », 12-14/06/19

“PASSAGES”: THE ROBERT DUNCAN CENTENNIAL CONFERENCE IN PARIS

Sorbonne Université, Paris, June 12-14 2019

Organizing committee:

Hélène Aji (Université Paris Nanterre), Stephen Collis (Simon Fraser University), Xavier Kalck (Sorbonne Université), James Maynard (University at Buffalo), Clément Oudart (Sorbonne Université)

JUNE 12

Maison de la recherche (28 rue Serpente), D040

9AM — Registration

9.30AM—Welcome Address by Pascal Aquien, VP of Sorbonne Université’s Faculté des Lettres, and by the Organizing Committee

10AM PLENARY PANEL 1

The H.D. Connection: Reading Robert Duncan Reading H.D.(Chair: Cynthia Hogue)

• Lara Vetter (University of North Carolina): “On Love and the American Canon: H.D., Robert Duncan, and ‘Venice-Venus.’”
• Jeanne Heuving (University of Washington): “Associating With Robert Duncan: Universals, Genders and Sexualities in H.D.’s Helen in Egypt”
• Susan McCabe (University of Southern California): “Duncan & H.D.: the ‘Chosen Family’ and Queer Lineage”
• Brian Caraher (Queen’s University Belfast, UK): “Sourcing ‘a Place of First Permission’: Robert Duncan’s ‘Mythological Mind’ and H.D.’s Trilogy”

12PM    LUNCH BREAK full buffet in Hall of 2^nd Floor.

2PM 2 WORKSHOPS

D040 Workshop 1a. Duncan in Paris (Chair: Olivier Brossard)

• Ted Byrne (Independent scholar): “là où il y a œuvre, il n’y a pas folie” (on Duncan, Blaser and Nerval)
• Abigail Lang (Université Paris Diderot): “Duncan in Paris”
• Norma Cole (Independent scholar): “Field Notes from Paris”
• Clément Oudart (Sorbonne Université): “Duncan’s French Musings: Experiencing the Foreign and the Poetics of Strangeness”

D116 Workshop 1b. Duncan’s Politics (Chair: Juliette Utard)

• Katherine Dubois (University of Maine): “‘As Far as Our Neighborhood Extends:’ Looking at the Duncan Circle as a Model for What’s Possible”
• Sarah Ehlers (University of Houston): “The Trotskyite Menace on Campus: Robert Duncan in the Thirties”
• Peter Moore (Purdue University): “Banking the Seeds of Language: Robert Duncan, Phonetics and the Vernacular of Preliteracy”
• Eric Keenaghan (University at Albany): “La politique des vieux: Robert Duncan’s Late Anarchism, Sexuality, and Poetry’s Political Life”

4PM COFFEE BREAK Hall of 2^nd Floor

4.30PM D040 KEYNOTE 1: MIRIAM NICHOLS

“POETRY AND POLIS: ROBERT DUNCAN’S SYMPOSIUM OF THE WHOLE”

(Chair: Stephen Collis)

6.30PM Amphitheatre Quinet — POETRY READING 1 – Sorbonne main campus (46 rue Saint-Jacques)

Hosted by Hélène Aji and featuring Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Norma Cole, Michael Heller, Steve McCaffery, Michael Palmer, Jerome Rothenberg, Nathaniel Tarn

JUNE 13

Maison de la recherche (28 rue Serpente)

9AM D035 PLENARY PANEL 2 Duncan and the Esoteric (Chair: Devin Johnston)

• Norman Finkelstein (Xavier University): “Robert Duncan, Kabbalah, and ‘The Dominion of the Poetic Mind’”
• Joseph Donahue (Duke University): “The Lion of the Lord in Love: Robert Duncan and Sufism”
• Peter O’Leary (School of the Art Institute of Chicago): “Duncan’s Esotericism: A Modern Test”

10.30AM COFFEE BREAK Hall of 2^nd Floor

11AM 2 WORKSHOPS D035 Workshop 2a. Duncan Remembered (Chair: James Maynard)

• Devin Johnston (Saint Louis University): “In the South: Robert Duncan and Australia”
• Robert Adamson (Independent scholar): “The Ambassador from Venus”
• Alice Fahs (University of California, Irvine) and Mimi Chubb (Independent scholar): “First Lover: Reflections on Robert Duncan’s Relationship with Ned Fahs”

D116 Workshop 2b. Duncan and Philosophy (Chair: Nicholas Manning) 

• Elisabeth Joyce (Edinboro University of Pennsylvania): “‘ways of singing the world’: Robert Duncan, Black Mountain and Phenomenology”
• Robert Kaufman (University of California, Berkeley): “Negative Lunch; or, Duncan’s Frankfurt School”
• Jeff Hamilton (Independent scholar): “This is the Place:” Kantorowicz’ Mystical Humanism & Liturgical Form in “The Structure of Rime”

12.30PM LUNCH BREAK full buffet in Hall of 2^nd Floor.

2PM 2 WORKSHOPS D035 Workshop 3a. Duncan and Some Others (Chair: Fiona McMahon)

• Daniel Katz (University of Warwick, UK): “Duncan’s Logographs: Derivation and Gertrude Stein”
• Steve McCaffery (University at Buffalo): “Reading Duncan Reading Stein”
• Jeff Twitchell-Waas (Independent scholar): “‘A // music / at rest’: Duncan and Objectivist Poetics”
• Xavier Kalck (Sorbonne Université): “The Mathematics of Robert Duncan and John Taggart’s Pythagoreanism”

D116 Workshop 3b. Duncan at School and in the Press (Chair: Antonia Rigaud)

• Jennifer Moxley (University of Maine): “Three Orphic Triangles and One Square: Robert Duncan at Black Mountain College”
• Edward Alexander (Royal University of Bhutan / UC Berkeley): “Duncan’s Open-Form and Cagean Intermedia: The Poetics and Pragmatics of “Theatre” After Black Mountain”
• Nicholas James Wittington (University of California, Santa Cruz): “Kreis in Poetry: Robert Duncan, Diane di Prima, and David Meltzer in the Poetics Program at New College of California”
• Stephan Delbos (Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic): “The Community of Love and Scorn: Robert Duncan, Grove Press and Cold War American Poetry”

4PM COFFEE BREAK Hall of 2^nd Floor

4.30PM D035 KEYNOTE 2: STEPHEN FREDMAN

“ROBERT DUNCAN, DAVID ANTIN, AND THE PERFORMANCE OF EXPERIENCE.”

(Chair: Xavier Kalck)

Sorbonne main campus (46 rue Saint-Jacques)

6.30PM Amphitheatre Quinet — POETRY READING 2

Hosted by Stephen Collis and featuring Robert Adamson, Jane Augustine, Michael Boughn, Ted Byrne, Stephen Cope, Joseph Donahue, Thom Donovan, Amy Evans Bauer, Norman Finkelstein, Rob Halpern, Jeanne Heuving, Cynthia Hogue, Devin Johnston, Robert Kaufman, Erica Kaufman, Karen Mac Cormack, Myung Mi Kim, Abigail Lang, Peter Middleton, Jennifer Moxley, Peter O’Leary, Dale Martin Smith

JUNE 14

Sorbonne main campus (46 rue Saint-Jacques)

9AM Amphitheatre Quinet — PLENARY PANEL 3 Duncan Now (Chair: Miriam Nichols)

• Rachel Blau DuPlessis (Temple University): “Robert Duncan’s Long Poem: a Counterfactual Prospectus”
• Michael Boughn (Independent scholar): “Dispatches from the Poetry Wars”
• James Maynard (University at Buffalo): “Duncan Scholarship Now”

10.30AM COFFEE BREAK Faculty Club (Club des Enseignants, 54 rue Saint-Jacques)

11AM 2 WORKSHOPS

Amphitheatre Quinet Workshop 4a. The Book of the H.D. Book(Chair: Norman Finkelstein) 

• Stephen Collis (Simon Fraser University): “Pages from an RD Book: Time and the Anthropocene.”
• Jeff Fallis (Georgia Tech): “Can The H.D. Book Still Save American Art (and America Itself)?”
• Corey Zielinski (University at Buffalo): “People of the Book: Robert Duncan and Edmond Jabès”

Amphitheatre Michelet Workshop 4b. Duncan, H.D. and Beyond (Chair: Lara Vetter)

• Jane Augustine (Independent scholar): “Before Miss Keogh: Notes on Robert Duncan’s Early Childhood Reading and Literary Milieu”
• Amy Evans Bauer (Royal Holloway, University of London, UK): “Editing the Fan Mail/Fan Male: The Robert Duncan-H.D. Correspondence and the Performance of Influence”
• Charles Lock (University of Copenhagen, Denmark): “’That need for the sublime’: Fragments of Transcendence in Ezra Pound, H.D. and Robert Duncan”

12.30PM LUNCH BREAK full buffet at Hôtel des 3 Collèges (16 rue Cujas)

2PM 2 WORKSHOPS

Amphitheatre Quinet Workshop 5a. Duncan and the Form of Forms (Chair: Célia Galey)

• Graça Capinha (University of Coimbra, Portugal): “‘the inner law silenced now’ or Robert Duncan’s Relevance Today”
• Michael Heller (NYU): “The War of Poetry: Duncan’s Heresies”
• Adam Katz (University at Buffalo): “Prolegomena to a Metaphysical Prosodics”
• Peter Middleton (University of Southampton, UK): “Codes of Life and Text: Robert Duncan’s Poetic Cryptography”

Amphithéâtre Michelet Workshop 5b. Duncan and Some Others (2) (Chair: Stephen Fredman)

• Ross Hair (University of East Anglia, UK): “Re-membering in Robert Duncan’s ‘Nel Mezzo Del Cammin di Nostra Vita’”
• Dale Martin Smith (Ryerson University, Canada): “The Circle of the Bee-Hive: On the Correspondence of Robert Duncan and Charles Olson”
• Stephen Williams (Benedictine University): “Robert Duncan and Concrete Reality”
• Patrick James Dunagan (Independent scholar): “‘O for some high blown language release’: Lynn Lonidier’s Robert Duncan”
• Adam Mitts (University at Buffalo): “Loss and Community in Robert Duncan and Kevin Killian’s Dante Sonnets”

4PM COFFEE BREAK Faculty Club (Club des Enseignants, 54 rue Saint-Jacques)

4.30PM Amphithéâtre Quinet

ROUNDTABLE ON ROBERT DUNCAN & NEW NARRATIVE

(Moderator: Stephen Collis)

Stephen Cope (Hobart and William Smith Colleges, NY), Thom Donovan (The New School, NYC), Rob Halpern (Eastern Michigan University), Kaplan Harris (Saint Bonaventure University, NY), Erica Kaufman (Bard College Institute for Writing and Thinking), Eric Sneathen (University of California, Santa Cruz), Robin Tremblay-McGaw (Santa Clara University)

7PM Amphithéâtre Quinet

KEYNOTE 3: MICHAEL PALMER, “THE OPEN”

(Chair: Clément Oudart)

8PM COCKTAIL AT THE FACULTY CLUB (Club des Enseignants, 54 rue Saint-Jacques)

Contact: robertduncaninparis@gmail.com