Humanities Day 2022 - Keynote Address

(Virtual Session) Wealth, Inequality, and the Novel

sspatterson — Mon, 01 Aug 2022 18:31:12 +0000

Virtual

At least since the 18th century, novelists have wrestled with the question of whether the very idea of character—both as a moral quality and a representation of individuality—can withstand the pressure exerted by extreme wealth. To a great extent, however, this question has been raised only to assuage us with an assurance that the integrity of character can survive the erasure of social limits, and restraint made possible by extraordinary riches. This presentation discusses some recent fiction suggesting that in our moment of unprecedented inequality neither character nor society remain intelligible.

Wealth, Inequality, and the Novel

sspatterson — Mon, 01 Aug 2022 18:30:27 +0000

Keynote Address

In-Person

Kenneth W. Warren

sspatterson — Tue, 26 Jul 2022 21:38:53 +0000

Session:

Keynote Address

Kenneth W. Warren specializes in 19th- and 20th-century American and African American literature. The author of Black and White Strangers: Race and American Literary Realism (University of Chicago Press, 1993), So Black and Blue: Ralph Ellison and the Occasion of Criticism (University of Chicago Press, 2003), and What Was African American Literature? (Harvard University Press, 2010), Warren has also edited and written an introduction to Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle for the Norton Library (2022). He is co-editor of Renewing Black Intellectual History: The Material and Intellectual Foundations of African American Thought (Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, 2009). Warren is the Fairfax M. Cone Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of Chicago.