BOOK EVENTS
Book launch: Royal Attachments in France and Eco-Archives in Haiti: New Books in French Studies
1:30-3:30 p.m. Sept. 4, 602 Cathedral of Learning
Two faculty members from the Department of French & Italian present and discuss their new books. Moderated by Todd Reeser, professor of French.
Chloé Hogg’s “Absolutist Attachments: Emotion, Media, and Absolutism in Seventeenth-Century France” (Northwestern University Press) uncovers the affective and media connections that shaped Louis XIV’s absolutism. Studying literature, painting, engravings, correspondence, and the emerging periodic press, Hogg diagnoses the emotions that created absolutism’s feeling subjects and publics.
John Walsh’s “Migration and Refuge: An Eco-Archive of Haitian Literature, 1982-2017” (Liverpool University Press) argues that contemporary Haitian literature historicizes the political and environmental problems that resurfaced in the 2010 earthquake in Haiti by building on texts of earlier generations, notably the Duvalier era (1957-1986) and its aftermath. It contends that this literary "eco-archive" — or a body of texts that depicts environmental change over time and its impact on social justice — challenges the generalizing narratives of the Anthropocene and the global refugee crisis with stories of different forms and paths of migration and refuge within Haiti and around the Americas.
Co-sponsored by Early Modern Worlds Initiative, Medieval and Renaissance Studies Program, and the Center for Latin American Studies
Jeff Gordinier, author of “Hungry: Eating, Road-Tripping and Risking it All with the Greatest Chef in the World,” in conversation with chef Sonja Finn, of Dinette, and the Post-Gazette’s Dan Gigler
7 p.m. Sept. 5, Carnegie Lecture Hall. $10.
Gordinier, a New York Times contributor and food & drinks editor for Esquire, joined Danish chef René Redzepi of Noma on a four-year trip of discovery for new places, flavors and recipes. “Hungry” is a memoir, a travelogue, a portrait of a chef, and a chronicle of the moment when daredevil cooking became the most exciting and groundbreaking form of artistry.
NEW BOOKS
“The Failure of Latin America: Postcolonialism in Bad Times” by John Beverley, emeritus distinguished professor of Hispanic Languages and Literatures
“The Failure of Latin America” is a collection of John Beverley’s previously published essays and pairs them with new material that reflects on questions of postcolonialism and equality within the context of receding continental socialism. Beverley sees an impasse within both the academic postcolonial project and the Bolivarian idea of Latin America. The Pink Tide may have failed to permanently reshape Latin America, but in its failure there remains the possibility of an alternative modernity not bound to global capitalism. Beverley proposes that equality, modified by the postcolonial legacy, is a particularly Latin American possibility that can break the impasse and redefine Latinamericanism.
SEND US YOUR INFORMATION
The University Times welcomes information about new books, journals, plays and musical compositions written or edited by faculty and staff.
Newly published works can be submitted through this link. Please keep the book descriptions short and accessible to a general audience.
Journals should be peer-reviewed. Self-published works will not be accepted. The listings also are restricted to complete works, because individual chapters, articles, works of art and poems would be too numerous.
We’ll also be highlighting some books and book talks with connections to Pitt.
If you have any questions, please contact editor Susan Jones at suejones@pitt.edu or 412-648-4294.