All upcoming Authors, Books, & Writing programs

Inspired by the letters in her new book, Joyce Carol Oates: Letters to a Biographer (Akashic), Joyce Carol Oates, in a conversation with author and educator Rebecca Boggs Roberts, discusses her writing process and style over the past four decades. The letters in the book were part of a correspondence with a graduate student who eventually became her biographer.

For centuries, dictionaries were works of almost superhuman endurance produced by people who devoted themselves for years, even decades, to the wearisome labor of corralling, recording, and defining the vocabulary of a language. Educators and authors Bryan A. Garner and Jack Lynch share the stories behind these great works of scholarship and the people who produced them, including towering figures of English lexicography such as Samuel Johnson, Noah Webster, and the Oxford English Dictionary’s James Murray, as well as more obscure dictionary makers whose achievements are no less fascinating.

“Brilliant Exiles: American Women in Paris, 1900–1939” at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery illuminates the accomplishments of 60 women who crossed the Atlantic to pursue personal and professional aspirations in the vibrant cultural milieu of Paris. Robyn Asleson, the gallery’s curator of prints and drawings, provides an overview of the first exhibition to focus on the impact of American women on Paris—and of Paris on American women­—as she discusses portraits of Josephine Baker, Isadora Duncan, Zelda Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, and Anna May Wong, among others. (World Art History Certificate elective, 1/2 credit)

Ever since its publication in 1954, Nobel laureate William Golding’s Lord of the Flies has been a mainstay of syllabi and reading lists throughout the world. Literature professor Joseph Luzzi leads a detailed analysis and examination of the harrowing story of a group of British boys stranded on an uninhabited island during a time of war.

For historians like Megan Kate Nelson, the “archive,” usually a library, university, museum, or historical society collection, is a sacred place. But what happens when these sources don’t contain the answers they seek? Nelson unfolds three research adventures that led her to places beyond the traditional archives—including a mountain pass in New Mexico—during her preparation for The Three-Cornered War, a book about the Civil War in the desert Southwest.

The earliest known copy of work by Archimedes. Gutenberg and other early Bibles and Muslim manuscripts. Historical astronomical plates. All these historical objects have been digitized by Michael B. Toth, president of R. B. Toth Associates, and his colleagues in humanities and science. Toth discusses ongoing work on historic objects and offers examples of texts and objects that have been digitized using the latest advanced imaging systems.

Looking at the shared pasts of literature and computer science, former Microsoft engineer and professor of comparative literature Dennis Yi Tenen provides a context for recent developments in artificial intelligence. Rather than a magical genie capable of self-directed thought or action, Yi Tenen draws on labor history, technology, and philosophy to examine why he views AI as a reflection of the long-standing cooperation between authors and engineers.

John Milton’s Paradise Lost from 1667 is generally considered to be the greatest epic poem in the English language. Literature professor Joseph Luzzi explores Milton’s relation to ancient literature, rewriting of religious doctrine, and place in the political and social upheavals of his era. He also discusses Milton’s blindness and his role as a pamphleteer.

Throughout history, the creation of books involved a wide variety of materials from the natural world, including unusual ones such as wasps and seaweed. The “Nature of the Book” exhibition at the National Museum of Natural History, assembled by the Smithsonian Libraries and Archives, shows what the use of these materials can tell us about books, touching on questions of purpose, process, global trade, and economy. Curators Katie Wagner and Vanessa Haight Smith discuss their process and research.

A picture is not only worth a thousand words: It can sometimes inspire a whole invented world. Art historian Heidi Applegate explores the art, artists, and factual backgrounds behind three works of historical fiction­—Rules of Civility by Amor Towles; The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt; and The Latecomer by Jean Hanff Korelitz. It’s a “novel” way to explore the arts. (World Art History Certificate elective, 1 credit)