I want to know, “Don’t you ever find yourself suspicious when I’m so sanguine about these intimate relationships–Hal, Michael, friends, students? Don’t you wonder, can that much good relating really happen? And where are all the conflicts?”

With some thought, he says, “For a long time I was aware of staying agnostic about it. Not suspicious, but close to that. But over time, I guess I’ve figured that if you’ve been systematically misperceiving all these relationships–well, it is systematic; it seems to work in a consistent way for you. [...] Are you asking this because you want to flash me a yellow light?”

“No, no, I don’t think so. But I sometimes wonder

whether you think I
overidealize my
friends. Kind of wholesale.”

“You think?”

“I think about it, sure. Last week Mary described me to myself as ‘scattering sequins over us all’–all the people I love. She’s right, she and they do seem so glamorous and numinous to me. I always see the light shaking out of their wings.” (107-108)

Whoever it was who was speaking said that’s the way Eve made us feel, covered in sequins and rhinestones, all sparkly and glittery. And, last night, that’s how it felt, everything magically sprinkled with pixie dust, for those of us who came from Brooklyn, from Oklahoma, from California, from Victoria, from Oxford, from Australia, trudging through foot-deep snow to a building which had been closed due to the weather, but once past security, seemed a hive of activity from the two conferences “Spanking and Poetry” and “The Poetics of Pain.” How could all this have happened without the assistance of magic?

Tough Decisions...

And yet, at the same time, I’m aware that there are those whose pumpkins remained stubbornly untransformed, and who might read these words and think of their decidedly unmagical Friday night. To these, I hope that some of Eve’s sequins, Eve’s magic, works its way through switch and router, optical cable and circuit board, to illumine my keystrokes, to dust your computer screen, to work at least some good in a world where there’s precious little of it.

Eve taught what must be the weirdest English Literature graduate seminar offered for credit ever: “How to do Things with Words and other Materials,” which she sometimes described as, “basically a studio arts class,” and conducted at her own studio. The media  involved were paper, textiles, and books, primarily; assignments included hexaflexagons, cards, mail art, collage, and altered books. I’ll admit to being more than a bit skeptical about the whole thing; the whole thing sounded kind of new-agey, and I felt my allergy to hippies threatening to act up. When I saw the informal exhibition which was organized at the end of the semester, though, I was a convert, seduced by the sequins and sparkles. The work was, quite simply, good: inventive, diverse, intelligent, and engaging. I had forgotten just how good it was. On Thursday, I was on door duty, so I only had the opportunity for a whirlwind tour of the exhibit which featured work from various incarnations of the class, but I left newly astounded by the quality of the work. My only complaint was that you weren’t allowed to touch the materials, which was what was so great about the more informal end-of-semester exhibition I attended. Still, it was neat to see the works in a new light: the show had been meticulously curated by Allen Durgin, dividing the works from about fifty artists into sections of the syllabus, giving us a narrative of the course, rather than just showing end-products. And all that work, just for a four-hour show! Did I mention the Cinderella feeling which pervaded these two days?

But really, most of my Thursday was spent reorganizing nametags, checking people off a list, guiding the poor folks who were going to two unrelated events in  rooms adjacent to ours which involved walking around the exhibit-goers. Anybody more qualified to comment on the show is encouraged to do so!

And then, Friday.

I’m not a morning person. I had set my alarm for six am, given that I still had revisions to do for my paper, and I wanted to get to the Graduate Center so I could print the paper out before my panel, scheduled to begin at 9:15. I was more nervous about getting out of bed than actually delivering my not-yet-finished paper. (I’m not by habit a last-minute junkie–I really prefer being able to have a practice run or two of a presentation-ready draft at least the night before the paper.) The night before, I asked Tracy to call me when he woke up to make sure I was up. So, when I saw that he had called me at 6:30, having successfully gotten up fifteen minutes earlier, I thought he’d been kind enough to remember to give me the wake-up call. I texted him, so that he wouldn’t think I had slept through it. And then, at 6:42 am, I got the text, “Gc is closed.” I immediately called Tracy; it all seemed, as Maggie wrote, like a bizarre bad dream. When I had woken up, I peeked out the window and noticed the heavy snow that continued to fall, and immediately went to the GC website to see if the building was closed. There wasn’t anything posted there, and for some reason, the banner didn’t show up on my screen until after the phone call with Tracy.

So I went back to bed, and proceeded to sleep for longer than I had slept the night before. I woke up at 1:30 in the afternoon, saw a text from Tracy saying “We’re on at 1,” and went through the twenty-odd emails that had been exchanged during my “nap” that resulted in the conference’s resurrection. By the time I got my thoroughly disoriented self to the conference, it was quarter past three, so I can’t comment on what happened before. Here’s my account of what I saw.

There wasn’t one single paper I saw that wasn’t smart, taking Sedgwick’s work in quirky new directions, so thankfully I don’t have to worry about anybody being offended by being left out or damned with faint praise. It was one of the most exciting conferences I’ve been to. The papers were certainly better than most of the ones I saw at MLA. I’ve sometimes heard that graduate student papers have fresher ideas than papers delivered by tenured faculty, but this was the first time I actually saw evidence of it.

The first panel I saw, titled, as Linda Neiberg, moderator and behind-the-scenes superstar called it, “Downstairs, 4406.” Despite the arbitrariness suggested by the title, there was a remarkable coherence in the presentation. Lisa McNally’s talk, “Reading Queer,” for me, epitomized what made all the papers wonderful. Her talk could easily have been terrible, but it wasn’t–if you’re reading this, Lisa, I mean that as a compliment not given lightly! She began in the personal, self-conscious mode, speaking of her love for Sedgwick and her fear of embarrassment in declaring her love in front of an audience who also loved Sedgwick. It could have been one of those embarrassingly autobiographical, pedantically self-reflexive, intellectually vapid papers one sometimes finds in identity-politics driven critique–and I confess this was my fear when I heard the opening. What followed, though, was a paper which made critical use of that risk she described in a number of important ways: the risk involved in love, the risk involved in coming out, the risks Sedgwick took again and again, and the risk at the heart of “queer,” if “queer” and “reading queer” are to remain a vital forces–”queer” as Sedgwick invoked it, not as the stable identity category it has become.

All of the papers I saw on Friday took risks, risks which you’d rarely encounter at an academic conference, graduate student or otherwise, without sacrificing any degree of intellectual rigor. Nina Pick’s presentation on Alain Robbe-Grillet’s Jealousy ended with a lyrical, self-described “camp” “misreading”/evocation of girl-on-girl intimacy, after exploring complex (more-than-triangular!) networks of desire between narrator and character, character and book, reader and narrator, reading and misreading. Olivia Murphy’s talk on Jane Austen and her critics turned from the potentially cringe-making subject of loving Jane Austen to a subtle exploration of love’s complicated meaning and resistance to meaning, inviting renewed critical attention to love in Sedgwick and Austen. I only took one class with Eve, “Reading Relations,” and I thank the three panelists for recalling to me Eve’s ideas behind that seminar.

The next panel I attended wasn’t so unified in theme, but displayed the surprising variety of approaches which also marked the day. Tavy Ralid’s paper on Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go read the novel alongside Hardt and Negri’s account of affective labor in Empire, Sedgwick’s own work on affect, and Sianne Ngai’s chapter on “Tone” in Ugly Feelings. Kristi-Lynn Cassaro’s provocative, humorous, and insightful piece on Giovanni’s Room first made an intervention against queer theory’s mobilization around the term “transgender” as something curiously divorced from actual trans bodies, offering compelling close readings of the book’s opening and closing representations of a body and its reflections. Michael Broder discussed the (almost non-existent) state of queer theory in Classical studies, arguing that despite brilliant foundational work by David Halperin and Amy Richlin, classicists have become curiously resistant to queer theory. And who doesn’t like hearing about Priapus, the Roman god of gardens who’d fuck any intruder, man or woman, in any available orifice? (The f-bomb, of course, is only to follow Michael’s terminology.)

My own panel had an even greater range of approaches, as we each came from different disciplines, and reflected on our own disciplines in relation to Sedgwick. Yours truly gave a, to quote myself, “flaky” presentation, which included recollections of Eve’s pedagogy, the space of the literature classroom, gratuitous block-quoting, thirty seconds of uncomfortable silence (yes!), and repeated discussion of the paper’s various titles. Warren Liew and Emma Kaufman brought us down to earth by discussing the more fraught spaces they dealt with in Education and Criminology, respectively: the high school English classroom in Singapore in Warren’s case, and a prison cell containing a stateless detainee in legal limbo in Emma’s. If it was curious for us humanists to hear from disciplines following the social-sciences model, one got the sense that to hear about Sedgwick within those fields would be equally unlikely. Sedgwick’s work on performatives, periperformatives and affect proved powerful tools in questioning the methodology of classroom ethnography and prison studies.

Jedi Master, Photoshop (GIMP) Disaster

I’m not going to attempt to rehash the collaborative keynote, written by Jonathan Goldberg and Michael Moon snowbound in Georgia, delivered by proxy by Hal Sedgwick and Josh Wilner in New York, and it’s not just because Tracy and Maggie had encouraged us to refill our glasses and take another slice of pizza before sitting to listen to the talk. (And some fairy godmother made sure there was vegan pizza too!) It was the perfect ending to a magical conference, and I’ll let the moment remain special to those who were there. But, what you should know, is that the volume of Eve’s uncollected writings sounds as exciting, innovative, and original as everything she’s done. Her work on queer theory, as we know, was revolutionary, and her work on affect is really taking hold of the academy right now: the new work on Buddhist epistemology, theories of mind, and Proust’s mysticism sounds like it could launch yet another wave of reinvigorated scholarship.

Michael Moon noted that Eve, despite coming of age as a feminist in the seventies and eighties, never caught a taste for feminist science fiction. This didn’t stop him from devoting a large portion of his part of the keynote to a late nineteenth-century French science fiction novel occasionally translated On the Eve of the Future. Somehow it seemed appropriate. And somehow, it seemed appropriate for me to appeal to the vaguely  Buddhist wisdom of Yoda. The world of Star Wars–which I realize counts neither as feminist nor as science fiction–is so much more of a home for me than anything else I associate with my childhood, and that’s what Eve offered us that night and for always–a home for all our alien selves.

I awoke to another phone call. It was Tracy again, but this time I heard him smiling as he told me that we were going to be able to meet in the closed building after all. I jumped quickly into the shower only to realize moments later that I had showered the night before. Without being able to check my messages due to an internet outage, I threw on some weather combat clothes and my favorite skirt and flew out the door and into the flurry, running to catch the 4 train as it thundered into the station.

Almost as suddenly, I was in Manhattan, making my way down 34th Street where one business owner was building an army of small snowmen while other proprietors shoveled snow drifts. I trudged into the building and burst into action, taping signs along the semi-darkened corridors and giving instructions to the security downstairs. People began to slowly filter into the English department, and—despite the snow—around fifty people made it in and were privileged to hear wonderful speakers throughout the afternoon. I’ve assembled our snow day schedule; click “read more” below to view it. This post will be followed up by a review of the conference by Mia Chen, who presented a paper entitled “Rooms [sic].”

—Margaret.

Session 1: 1:30-3:00
DOWNSTAIRS, 4406
“Fisting-as-écoute: Anality, Musicality, and the Materiality of Language,” Trent Leipert, University of Chicago
“National Beatings: American Rhythm and Bodily Metaphor in the Work of William Carlos Williams,” Vaclav Paris, University of Pennsylvania
“A Spanking Trot: Liveliness, Playtime, Alterity, and Experimentation in the Work of Stein, Cage and Retallack,” Astrid Lorange, University of Technology, Sydney (Australia)
“Reading the Male Skin: Touching and Feeling in Shakespeare,” Kristina Huang, The Graduate Center (CUNY)

Session 2: 3:30-4:30
UPSTAIRS (A/V), 5489
“Is Violence Reparative? Ron Athey, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, and the Erotics of Boundary,” Leon J. Hilton, New York University
“Reparative Reading, Aestheticism, and Argumentation,” Rachel O’Connell, New York University
“Reparative Practices and the Exemption from Meaning: Sedgwick, Barthes, Affect, Ethics, Happiness,” Alec Magnet, The Graduate Center (CUNY)

DOWNSTAIRS, 4406
“Falling in Love (again?!): Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s Loving Criticism and Jane Austen’s Critical Loving,” Olivia Murphy, Oxford University
“Reading Queer,” Lisa McNally, Oxford University
“Queer Appropriation: Reading in(to) Jealousy,” Nina Pick, University of California-Berkeley

Session 3: 4:45-5:50
UPSTAIRS (A/V), 5489
“Thinking Beside: Empire, Affective Labor, and Tone in Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go,” Taly Ravid, University of California-Los Angeles
“Transgendered Subjectivity: The Homeless Girl in Giovanni’s Room,” Kristi-Lynn Cassaro, The Graduate Center (CUNY)
“Queering Roman Sexuality: A Reparative Reading of Priapus and His Poetry,” Michael Broder, The Graduate Center (CUNY)

DOWNSTAIRS, 4406
“’Coming into Excess of Every Kind’: Victorian Drag in the History of Fashion,” Abigail Joseph, Columbia University
“Unspeakable Privilege: The Kynde Crafte of Clannesse,” David J. Fine, Lehigh University
“Cognitive Dissonance: Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Affect Studies, and the Question of Intelligence,” Marissa Brostoff, Independent Scholar

Session 4: 6:10-7:30
UPSTAIRS (A/V), 5489
“Rooms [sic],” Mia Chen, The Graduate Center (CUNY)
“Embodying the Lived Experience of Teaching: Periperformative Intimations,” Warren Mark Liew, Stanford University
“The Ethics of Affect: Bringing Eve Sedgwick to Bear on Prison Studies,” Emma Kaufman, Oxford University

DOWNSTAIRS, 4406
“Eve’s Ethics,” Rebekah Sheldon, The Graduate Center (CUNY)
“‘Pricked’: Navigating Negative Affects in the Digitalized Classroom,” David Bahr, The Graduate Center (CUNY)
“The Bride Wore Pants: Palimpsestic Periperformativity in Sylvia Scarlett and The Bride Wore Red,” Paul Mitchell, University of Oklahoma

UPSTAIRS, 5414
“Taken By Surprise: Henry James’s Trans-Atlantic Feelings,” Kate Stanley, Columbia University
“Changing the Subject: Ellipticism, Opacity, and Reparative Reading in Contemporary Poetry,” Tim Peterson, The Graduate Center (CUNY)
“The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Ego on the Planet Gethen,” Julian Gunn, University of Victoria

Reception/Keynote Reading: 7:45 in 4406—More wine, cheese, vegetables, and pizza.

We will meet at The Graduate Center TODAY (Friday) AT 1 P.M and hear papers from those who are able to attend. This will occur in an informal, plenary session. I understand that some of us may not quite be there by one. Please arrive when and if you safely can.

IMPORTANT: Please bring picture ID.

IMPORTANT: Tell Security you are attending the English Student Association Conference (they will know nothing about spanking, poetry, or Sedgwick).

IMPORTANT: If you have difficulty, please call Margaret Galvan or Tracy Riley.

I know this is not ideal, but let’s get together, drink the wine, and hear the great papers that people have brought.

(p.s. – This is now a final decision; we can’t fix things with security for a different time)

Tracy Riley

Michael Moon was Eve Sedgwick’s colleague at Duke where they co-taught early courses in Queer Theory and collaborated on talks and articles about such figures as Divine and John Waters and Walt Whitman and his mother Louisa. They continued to enjoy less formal collaborations of many kinds during the years they taught at different universities. Moon has recently finished work on a book entitled Darger’s Resources on the so-called outsider artist Henry Darger. His previous books include Disseminating Whitman and A Small Boy and Others. He edited the second edition of the Norton Critical Edition of Leaves of Grass.

Katy Hawkins lives in Philadelphia where she studies (and teaches) mind/body relations, including Zazen and Samatha/Vipassana meditation, Sanskrit and Vedic chanting, and the eight limbs of Raja Yoga as defined by Patanjali. She is currently working on a book on Eve’s art and its relation to Eastern spiritual frameworks. Since completing her Ph.D in Comp Lit from NYU, her cross-disciplinary work (culled from dance, film, poetry, and theory) has appeared in Women and Performance, Criticism, and The Painted Bride Quarterly, and has been presented at venues such as Cornelia Street Café (NYC), Connelly Theater (NYC), and The Ear Inn (NYC), not to mention the esteemed archives of YouTube.

Gregory John Mercurio studied with Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, where he earned his M.Phil in English literature and is currently completing the Ph.D dissertation he began under Eve’s supervision. His academic interests range from Proust and queer modernism to queer uses of Darwinian and post-Darwinian evolutionary thought. He is currently writing about Proust’s use of Ovidian metamorphosis in an evolutionary context. He has also been an artist and set designer Off-Broadway for the last 25 years, and was a resident scenic artist at Charles Ludlam’s Ridiculous Theatrical Company. He is the academic director of the Honors College at Adelphi University.

Jason Nielsen is in his fourth year in the English program at The Graduate Center. He is in the Interactive Technology and Pedagogy Certificate program at the GC, has previously taught courses in Digital Writing at Queens College, and will be teaching a class titled “The Digital Revolution.” Previous courses taught include American Studies and Representations of the Holocaust in literature and film. He is co-chair of the 20th-Century Studies Area Group and interests include American literature, memoir, affect, psychoanalysis, and digital culture. He is also working on archival materials of poet John Wieners for the CUNY Lost and Found Poetics project.

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 25

4:00 – 8:00 pm: How to Do Things with Words & Other Materials Art Exhibit, Concourse Level
Curated by Allen Durgin and the curatorial team of Annie Cranstoun, Lindsey Freer, Greg Mercurio, Tina Meyerhoff, and Jason Nielsen
See list of artists here.

5:30 – 7:00 pm: Roundtable Discussion, Concourse Level
Moderated by Allen Durgin, The Graduate Center (CUNY)

• Featuring: Amanda Berry, Katy Hawkins, Greg Mercurio, Jason Nielsen
  See roundtable bios here

7:00 – 8:00 pm: Reception, Room 4406

We look forward to receiving and reading your submissions!