Karen Karbiener, bandarískur fræðimaður, rithöfundur, sýningastjóri og kennari við New York University, flytur fyrirlestur á vegum Stofnunar Vigdísar Finnbogadóttur í erlendum tungumálum. Fyrirlesturinn nefnist „Walt Whitman's Free Verse and the Expression of Female Desire in Victorian Age America".

Fyrirlesturinn verður haldinn á Heimasvæði tungumálanna í Veröld - húsi Vigdísar, 16. mars kl. 12:00-13:00. 

Um fyrirlesturinn

“I am the poet of the woman the same as the man,” Walt Whitman announced in the first edition of Leaves of Grass (1855).  His contemporary female readers demonstrated their agreement from the earliest reviews of his poetry ("Walt Whitman, the effeminate world needed thee," enthused journalist Fanny Fern) to the passionate fan mail he received throughout his life.  Whitman's status as a 'voice in the wilderness' for early LGBT+ activism is broadly recognized; lesser known is the powerful reaction he generated as a spokesperson for women's social and sexual freedom.  This presentation will introduce ways in which Whitman and Leaves of Grass served to validate (and even stoke the fires of) female desire, highlighting a variety of women's responses: an 1856 photograph of an unknown woman suggestively holding Leaves of Grass; an extraordinary 1860 letter from a stranger; and A Woman's Estimate of Walt Whitman, published in 1870 by the English critic and activist Anne Gilchrist, who moved her family from the UK to the US in order to marry her "soul mate."  Provocative images from Margaret Cook's 1913 illustrated edition of Leaves of Grass will complement this discussion of how Whitman's so-called 'free verse' helped liberate the female reading public of Victorian age America.

Um fyrirlesarann

Karen Karbiener is an American scholar, writer, curator, and cultural activist and has been teaching at New York University since 2003. Winner of the Kluge Fellowship at the Library of Congress and a Fulbright recipient, she has published widely on Whitman, including an edition of Leaves of Grass, two audiobooks on the poet’s life and influence, a book introducing Whitman’s poetry to children, and a collaboration with Caldecott-winning illustrator Brian Selznick on a new edition of Live Oak, with Moss, Whitman’s secret same-sex love poems. She was the co-curator with Susan Tane of Poet of the Body: New York’s Walt Whitman (Grolier Club, NY; 2019) and is the author of a book based on the exhibition (University of Chicago Press, 2022). Karbiener is the president and founding member of the Walt Whitman Initiative, a non profit organisation serving as an organising centre for cultural activism and poetry-related events (including New York’s annual Song of Myself marathon, in its 20th year in 2023).