Keenaghan on Emerson on Pacifica Radio

UAlbany English Prof Eric Keenaghan will discuss Ralph Waldo Emerson's politics today (3PM EST) on Pacifica Radio/NPR affiliate KPFA Berkeley, CA. He writes:

 

Dear Colleagues:

Recently I recorded an interview with C.S. Soong for "Against the Grain," a program on Pacifica Radio/NPR out of Berkeley that usually interviews activists and intellectuals. My interview's topic is on Emerson [pictured here] and reading and politics. The interview will be broadcast on Monday afternoon, on air and online. (Details below.) This all came about because the host read my non-specialist essay in the The Other Emerson (U of Minnesota P, 2010), co-edited by two (now former) members of our department, Branka Arsic and Cary Wolfe.

It is heartening because it has reminded me that non-academics can, and sometimes do, read our work. And some of them are better poised for helping us disseminate our ideas and voices than the usual academic routes.

--Eric

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In Celebration of "Difficult Women"

Pulitzer-winning biographer John Matteson comes tomorrow to discuss Margaret Fuller, one of the great "difficult women" of the 19th century.

"Arrogant, condescending and vain, Fuller was (as she knew altogether too well) the best-educated American woman of her time. In The Lives of Margaret Fuller, John Matteson tells us that Ralph Waldo Emerson thought she exhibited 'an overweening sense of power, and slight esteem of others'; Nathaniel Hawthorne found her, as Matteson puts it, 'exquisitely irritating'; and Edgar Allan Poe portrayed her acidly. Habituated to deference from others, she was unaccustomed to dealing with people on an equal footing, and she bristled when she did not receive the respect she thought was her due."

Read more in Mary Beth Norton's review of Matteson's new book in the New York Times.

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