Stanford Humanities Center
Join us on October 16 for the keynote lecture in Essay Week at Stanford, featuring Mario Aquilina of the University of Malta.
Based on the publication of The Cambridge History of the British Essay, edited by Denise Gigante and Jason Childs, Essay Week at Stanford (October 16–18, 2024) brings together sixteen leading scholars on the essay to talk about the nature, form, and future of the essay as a literary genre. At issue are ancient influences on the essay as a form of rhetoric to the essay in the age of artificial intelligence. Experts in the relation of the essay to visual media, the history of the transatlantic essay, the political essay as propaganda, the essay as a school “theme,” the postcolonial essay, the essay and psychoanalysis, the essay as a form of food writing, the essay as criticism, the bibliographical essay, the Irish essay and performance, and the essay in relation to dreams and reverie will convene for what promises to be a landmark event in essay studies. Students, alumni, faculty, and members of the public are welcome.
Essay Week is sponsored by the Department of English, the School of Humanities and Sciences, the Graduate School of Business, the Stanford Humanities Center, the Center for Human Centered Artificial Intelligence, the Vice Provost of Undergraduate Education, the American Studies Program, the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity, and the Creative Writing Program of Stanford University.
Full Schedule
Wednesday, October 16
Keynote Lecture
The Essay Today: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of the Essay
6:00–7:30, Levinthal Hall, Stanford Humanities Center
Mario Aquilina, University of Malta
Author of The Essay at the Limits and editor of The Edinburgh Companion to the Essay
Thursday, October 17
Lunchtime Workshops
What is the Public Essay?
Robert Harrison, Stanford University
12:00–1:00, Terrace Room, Margaret Jacks Hall
What is the Academic Essay?
Thomas Karshan, University of East Anglia
1:00–2:00, Terrace Room, Margaret Jacks Hall
Methods Café: Essay Studies
5:00–7:00, Terrace Room, Margaret Jacks Hall, Stanford
Christy Wampole, Princeton University, editor of The Cambridge History of the American Essay, and
Denise Gigante, Stanford University, editor of The Cambridge History of the British Essay
Friday, October 18
Seminar: The Literary Essay
10:00–12:00, Terrace Room, Margaret Jacks Hall, Stanford
Kara Wittman, UC Berkeley, editor of The Cambridge Companion to the Essay
10:00–1:00: Lunch, Terrace Room
Roundtables on the History of the British Essay
Terrace Room, Margaret Jacks Hall, Stanford
1:00–2:30
Rachel Baldacchino, University of Malta
Philip Coleman, Trinity College, Dublin
Priti Joshi, University of Puget Sound
Jacob Sider Jost, Dickinson College
3:00–4:30
Paul Keen, Associate Dean, Carleton University
Paige Reynolds, College of the Holy Cross
Margaret Russett, University of Southern California
Amy Tigner, University of Texas, Arlington
When
Stanford Humanities Center
424 Santa Teresa Street
Oct. 17 & 18 at Margaret Jacks Hall, Terrace Room. See full schedule in event description.
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