Category: the past

Boxing talk at Highgate Cemetery, rescheduled for Jan. 11, 2023!

Delighted to share that on Jan. 11, 2023 (rescheduled from Nov. 24), I’ll be speaking in person at Highgate Cemetery about Pierce Egan and Tom Sayers, who are buried at Highgate Cemetery, and the complex, bloody world of nineteenth-century English boxing, which fascinated Lord Byron and John Keats. More at the Highgate Cemetery website.

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Blake and Kae Tempest: Seeing “People’s Faces” with students (Nov. 28)

On Nov. 28, I’ll take part via Zoom in The Blake Society’s special event to celebrate the launch of its journal VALA’s new issue – which includes my short piece on teaching Blake’s “London” alongside current Blake Society president Kae Tempest’s spoken-word poem “People’s Faces” – over Zoom on Dec. 21, 2020.  It was, and […]

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Barking at the angel.

On the top floor of the Accademia in Florence, in an overlooked panel of a medieval altarpiece, is an image that’s easy to ignore: a shepherd’s dog, barking at the angel who’s suddenly appeared to rouse the obviously startled shepherds from their sleep. There were shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flocks […]

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Tinfoil Mary, “strong women,” and stays against confusion.

Left: The great writer. Right: Her tinfoil avatar. “I was hoping for a great memorial to Mary Wollstonecraft…this isn’t it.” – Historian Simon Schama I’m sure everyone involved meant well. I can’t wait to see how my next crop of “In Frankenstein’s Footsteps” study-abroad students will react to it [in a post-COVID J-term 2022 — […]

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An Awful Rainbow: possible introduction, part 2.

Possible introduction, continued, to An Awful Rainbow: Reading the Romantics in a World on Fire. Read Part One here. *** We Frankenstein pilgrims came home to a year that only got scarier. First, there was barely-averted war with Iran. The presidential caucus – Iowa’s pride and joy – came apart in our hands.  Then the […]

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