Visiting Speakers Series: Richard Halpern

The UT Department of English will sponsor a lecture 'Greek Theater and Democratic Thought: Arendt to Ranciere' by Richard Halpern, Professor of English at Johns Hopkins University. The lecture will be held on Thursday, March 18^th, in 1210 McClung Tower, from 4-5. A short reception with the scholar will follow. On Friday, March 19^th at noon, in 1210 McClung Tower, Professor Halpern will lead a seminar on his recent essay 'Eclipse of Action: 'Hamlet and the Political Economy of Playing' (in Shakespeare Quarterly 59.4 [2008]). Graduate students are especially encouraged to attend, though others are welcome.

At both talks, Professor Halpern will speak about his current book project 'Eclipse of Action: Tragedy and Political Economy,'which traces the dilemma of modern tragedy to an economic context that elevates making or production over doing or action, and uses this context to cast a retrospective glance over the history of tragic drama from Aeschylus to Beckett.

Professor Halpern's research interests include sixteenth- and seventeenth-century literature, especially drama; Shakespeare; modernism; literary theory, especially Marxist and psychoanalytic; aesthetics; science and literature. He is the author of Shakespeare's Perfume: Sodomy and Sublimity in the Sonnets, Wilde, Freud and Lacan (Penn, 2002), an exploration of relations between sexuality and aesthetics. His most recent book is Norman Rockwell: The Underside of Innocence (University of Chicago Press, 2006).

Professor Halpern has taught at Berkeley, the University of Colorado at Boulder, and Yale. He won an NEH Fellowship in 1993-1994 and is currently on the editorial board of English Literary History.

Richard Halpern's visit is part of the 2009-2010 Visiting Speakers Series sponsored by the Department of English.

The lecture and seminar are free and open to the public. For more information, contact Mary Dzon (mdzon@utk.edu).