Robert Penn Waren Center
Meet a Fellow: Ken MacLeish
Nov. 29, 2021—Meet Ken MacLeish, a 2021-2022 RPW Center Faculty Fellow. This year’s group is exploring the theme of “Environments.” What does the phrase “Environments” mean to you? “Environments” to me are the collections of things—places, objects, forces, non-human and even human life—that are socially designated as “other” to humanity but which are too materially, biologically, symbolically, or...
Meet a Fellow: Jennifer Gutman
Nov. 12, 2021—Meet Jennifer Gutman, a 2021-2022 RPW Center Environments Graduate Student Fellow. She is a fifth-year joint-Ph.D. candidate in English and Comparative Media Analysis & Practice (CMAP). Her dissertation, “End-Holocene Realism: Archiving Epochal Transition in the Contemporary Novel,” explores how contemporary realist novels respond to the distinct forms of crisis, risk, and uncertainty that characterize life at the onset of a new epoch. ...
Intersections as Proxies for Home Address: Alternatives for Community GIS
Nov. 9, 2021—Danielle Wilfong is a doctoral student in the Community Research and Action program with a specialization in socio-spatial research at Vanderbilt Peabody College. She was also the 2020-2021 RPW Center HASTAC Scholar. Do you remember road trips in the 1990s? I recall badgering my dad to pull over and ask for directions. When we finally convinced him,...
Meet a Fellow: Teresa A. Goddu
Nov. 1, 2021—Meet Teresa A. Goddu, a 2021-2022 RPW Center Faculty Fellow. This year’s group is exploring the theme of “Environments.” What does the phrase “Environments” mean to you? I am thinking about our keyword “environments” specifically in terms of landscape—both actual and imagined. Landscape is such a rich terrain through which to investigate the history and culture...
El Día de los Muertos
Oct. 25, 2021—Alma Paz-Sanmiguel is an administrative specialist for CLACX at Vanderbilt University. In the sixteenth century, Spaniards brought the Roman Catholic celebrations of life, death, and regeneration to Latin America, where they fused with indigenous rituals that honored the dead. This merging of cultural practices led to the traditional holiday of el Día de los Muertos (Day...
The Moral Conflict of Democratic Citizenship
Oct. 18, 2021—Robert Talisse is the W. Alton Jones Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University and author of Sustaining Democracy: What We Owe to the Other Side (Oxford 2021). Vanderbilt Bookstore is hosting a launch for his book this Thursday, October 21st at 5 p.m. It is free and open to the public. A moral conflict lies at the heart...
Américas Award for Children’s and Young Adult Literature
Oct. 11, 2021—Colleen McCoy is the Outreach Coordinator of the Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies at Vanderbilt University. She also co-coordinates the Américas Award for Children’s & Young Adult Literature. Tonight (October 11), the Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies (CLACX) at Vanderbilt University and the Stone Center for Latin American Studies at Tulane University will...
Meet a Fellow: Eric Okamoto Akira MacPhail
Oct. 4, 2021—Eric O. A. MacPhail is the 2021-2022 George J. Graham Jr. Fellow from the Philosophy Department. His research specializes in social and political philosophy, the philosophy of race, and 19th and 20th century continental philosophy. What is your research about and why does it matter? Scholars are turning more and more toward theories of racist ideology...
White Supremacy at the Border: Haitians, History, and A Fight for Dignity
Sep. 27, 2021—Jesús G. Ruiz is a National Academy of Sciences Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in Caribbean History in the Department of History at Vanderbilt. He is one of several speakers scheduled for this Friday’s Circum-Atlantic Studies Seminar conference, “Other African Diasporas,” to be held at Vanderbilt’s Digital Commons from 3-6 p.m. Click here for a complete list of...
RPW Center Sponsors “Environments” Track at 2021 Southern Festival of Books
Sep. 20, 2021— Serenity Gerbman, Director of Literature and Language Programs at Humanities Tennessee. As I write this, our neighbors in Humphrey County are grieving and just beginning to rebuild after horrific flash floods, while our friends along the Gulf Coast still lack power and face tremendous damage after Hurricane Ida. It feels as if half the country...