Literature and culture conference features authors in free keynote sessions

More than 300 literary scholars, critics and writers from around the world are expected at the University of Louisville for the Feb. 21-23 Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture Since 1900.

UofL's English, Classical and Modern Languages, and Comparative Humanities departments and the Commonwealth Center for the Humanities and Society sponsor the annual conference with topics ranging from “Sharp Objects” to Virginia Woolf and from poetry criticism to fairy tales and superheroes. Keynote addresses listed below are free and public; those speakers are:

--Sianne Ngai, cultural theorist, University of Chicago English professor and author of “Ugly Feelings” and “Our Aesthetic Categories: Zany, Cute, Interesting.” She will speak about “Transparency and Enigma in the Gimmick as Capitalist Form” at 5 p.m. Feb. 21 in Chao Auditorium, Ekstrom Library.

--Amy Parker, University of Iowa lecturer and winner of UofL’s 2018 Calvino Prize in fiction, will read from her “Pica Ceremony (for feeding the hungry ghosts)” at 11 a.m. Feb. 22 in Bingham Poetry Room, Ekstrom Library.

--Ivonne Gordon Carrera Andrade, University of Redlands professor of Spanish and Latin American literature and an award-winning poet, literary critic and translator. The Ecuador native will discuss “The Trouble of Travels: Language and Displacement” at 3:15 p.m. Feb. 22 in Bingham Poetry Room, Ekstrom Library.

--Douglas Kearney, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities creative writing instructor and author of the poetry collections “Buck Studies,” “Patter,” “The Black Automaton” and “Fear, Some,” as well as the nonfiction book “Mess and Mess and.” He will read from his work at 5 p.m. Feb. 22 in Room 100, Bingham Humanities Building.

--Lynn Keller, poetry and environmental humanities professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she directs the Center for Culture, History and Environment. Her books include “Re-making it New: Contemporary American Poetry and the Modernist Tradition.” She will discuss “Botanical Ecopoetics in the Self-conscious Anthropocene” at 5 p.m. Feb. 23 at Cressman Center for Visual Arts, 100 E. Main St.

For more information, contact Alan Golding, 502-852-5918 or alan.golding@louisville.edu, or check www.thelouisvilleconference.com.