Saturday, February 15, 3PM
Seminary Co-op Bookstore
Joan Hawkins - "William S. Burroughs Cutting Up the Century" - Dalia Davoudi
Joan Hawkins discusses "William S. Burroughs Cutting Up the Century." He will be joined in conversation by Dalia Davoudi . A Q&A and signing will follow the discussion.
About the book: "William S. Burroughs Cutting Up the Century" is the definitive book on Burroughs’ overarching cut-up project and its relevance to the American twentieth century. Burroughs’s Nova Trilogy ("The Soft Machine," "Nova Express," and "The Ticket That Exploded") remains the best-known of his textual cut-up creations, but he committed more than a decade of his life to searching out multimedia for use in works of collage. By cutting up, folding in, and splicing together newspapers, magazines, letters, book reviews, classical literature, audio recordings, photographs, and films, Burroughs created an eclectic and wide-ranging countercultural archive. This collection includes previously unpublished work by Burroughs such as cut-ups of work written by his son, cut-ups of critical responses to his own work, collages on the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal, excerpts from his dream journals, and some of the few diary entries that Burroughs wrote about his wife, Joan.
"William S. Burroughs Cutting Up the Century" also features original essays, interviews, and discussions by established Burroughs scholars, respected artists, and people who encountered Burroughs. The essays consider Burroughs from a range of starting points—literary studies, media studies, popular culture, gender studies, post-colonialism, history, and geography. Ultimately, the collection situates Burroughs as a central artist and thinker of his time and considers his insights on political and social problems that have become even more dire in ours.
About the author: Joan Hawkins is an Associate Professor in Cinema and Media Studies at Indiana University Bloomington. She has written extensively on horror and experimental film. Her books include: "Cutting Edge: Art Horror and the Horrific Avant-garde," and "Downtown Film and TV Culture 1975-2001" with Charles Cannon and Christopher Dumas, she is currently editing a 2-volume anthology on 1968.
About the interlocutor: Dalia Davoudi teaches fiction and film at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is currently completing her doctoral degree in English at Indiana University. Her research and teaching focus on feminist and queer approaches to science, embodiment and political dissent, and nineteenth century American literature.
This event is presented by the Seminary Co-op Bookstore