How do politics affect what poets or novelists write, and even how they write it? How does literature inform political discourse? What is cultural diplomacy, why is it so important, and what is the UI’s role in promoting it?
For this inaugural event in the Obermann Center’s new Counterpoint public conversation series, Christopher Merrill — poet, nonfiction writer, translator, editor, and director of the UI’s renowned International Writing Program — and Loren Glass, a historian of creative writing and M.F. Carpenter Professor and chair of the UI English department, will discuss the relationship between international politics and literature, taking Merrill’s 24-year tenure at the IWP as a point of departure. The two will discuss the difficult task of bringing creative writers from across geographical and political divides into cross-cultural conversation; Iowa City’s successful bid to become a UNESCO City of Literature; Merrill’s own writing on the wars of succession in the former Yugoslavia and Eastern Orthodox monasticism; the character of the creative process in different cultural traditions; and Merrill’s travels in China, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Russia, and Ukraine.
A brief musical program will be provided by an international ensemble of UI School of Music students: Mara Torres Melgares, soprano saxophone; Lingxiao Li, alto saxophone; Yang Zhou, tenor saxophone; and Thomas Drummond, baritone saxophone.
The event is free and open to all.
About the new Counterpoint series:
For each annual event in Obermann’s new Counterpoint series, two University of Iowa researchers from different disciplines will discuss a compelling topical issue in a public forum. Discussions will take place in the beautiful Voxman Recital Hall, and a short musical program designed to echo the theme of the conversation will open each event. Series events are free and open to all.
About the speakers:
Christopher Merrill has published eight collections of poetry, including Watch Fire, for which he received the Lavan Younger Poets Award from the Academy of American Poets; many edited volumes and translations; and six books of nonfiction, among them, Only the Nails Remain: Scenes from the Balkan Wars; Things of the Hidden God: Journey to the Holy Mountain; The Tree of the Doves: Ceremony, Expedition, War; and Self-Portrait with Dogwood. His writings have been translated into nearly 40 languages; his journalism appears widely; his honors include a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres from the French government, numerous translation awards, and fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial and Ingram Merrill Foundations. As director of the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa since 2000, Merrill has conducted cultural diplomacy missions to more than fifty countries. He served on the U.S. National Commission for UNESCO from 2011-2018, and in April 2012 President Barack Obama appointed him to the National Council on the Humanities.
Loren Glass’ research and teaching focus on literature and culture of the 20th- and 21st century United States, with a particular interest in literary modernism broadly conceived. His approach is sociological, with a particular focus on literary institutions. His first book, Authors Inc.: Literary Celebrity in the Modern United States, 1880-1980, chronicles the emergence of literary celebrity at the turn of the 20th century, as a strategy for negotiating the tensions between elite and popular conceptions of authorship, up through its contemporary manifestations. In recent years, he has been studying the history of creative writing, which has resulted in an edited collection entitled After the Program Era: The Past, Present, and Future of Creative Writing in the University (Iowa, 2017). He’s currently at work on an institutional history of creative writing at Iowa to be called University of Literature.