Barrett Watten
Home Page

Department of English
Wayne State University

Visit barrettwatten.net for updated entries, links, documents, and events.
Recent publications:
Diasporic Avant-Gardes: Experimental Poetics and Cultural Displacement, ed. with Carrie Noland (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009) The Constructivist Moment: From Material Text to Cultural Poetics (Wesleyan UP, 2003)
I read Grand Piano 1–7, chronologically, writer by writer, instead of volume by volume, lying in bed, on a Sunday. —Suzanne Stein, on FaceBook
A vital contribution to the collective memory of the poetry of that period. . . . The relationship of the individual to the society and its intermediate institutions, such as the Grand Piano readings, is relevant to any thoughtful analysis of the place of poetry writing and production today. —James Sherry, Jacket 34
Plasma/Parallèles/"X", French trans. Martin Richet (Le Quartanier, Montreal, P.Q.)  Progress/Under Erasure (Green Integer, 2004)
The collective autobiographers are less interested in revising the past and more interested in using the narratives of their history to further contextualize the complex poetics and communal history of that poetics for the future. . . to nurture an arena of possibilities where ideas can be exchanged. —Rob Fitterman, “Futuring The Grand Piano”
The Grand Piano is itself a veering off and an investigation and a playing or experimenting with the materials of language, history, textuality, and temporality, the personal and political, poetry and community . . . . There is an abundance to linger over in The Grand Piano even as and perhaps because of the large gaps and contradictions. —Robin Tremblay-McGaw, How2

Fall 2011 events:

Rae Armantrout @ WSU

“The Binding Problem: Poetry and the Data of Experience”
    with Geoffrey Nathan, Jeff Pruchnic, and Donora Hillard
1:00–2:30 PM, Thursday, September 22
English Department Conference Room
Room 10304, 5057 Woodward Avenue

Poetry reading
4:00–5:30 PM, Thursday, September 22
The Welcome Center Auditorium

è   Flyer here   

MSA 13 (Modernist Studies Association)
    6–9 October 2011

Fordism & the Structure of Modernist Innovation
Invited participant, 3:00–5:00, Thursday, 6 October
    seminar organized by Jason Baskin
"After Fordism: Detroit and the Cultural Work of the Negative"

Aesthetics of Theory in the Modernist Era
Chair, 1:30–3:00 PM, Friday, 7 October
    with Antoine Cazé, Amélie Ducroux, and Abigail Lang

Postmodern Poetry: Fact or Fiction?
Panel participant, 10:20 AM–12:00 PM, 8 October
    with Miriam Nichols, Alan Golding, and Joseph Conte
"After Postmodernism: Zero Hour in the Global Zone"

    Hyatt Regency Hotel, Buffalo

Poetry reading
9:30–11:00, Friday, 7 October

    Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center, Buffalo

è   Conference program here   

ASAP 3 (Association for the Study of the Arts
    of the Present): Arts of the Planet
    27–30 October 2011

Poetry Games/Procedural Poetics I
2:00–3:30, Friday, October 28
    with Carla Harryman and Brian Kim Stefans
"Radical Historicism in the Zone: Chance and the Nonexistent
    Present"

    Wyndham Hotel, Pittsburgh

è   Conference program here   

Chicago house reading: Chez Jennifer Rupert/
    Chris Glomski

Reading from Zone and other works
7:30 PM, Friday, November 4

    Humboldt Park, Chicago

Two Grand Piano readings: UC Berkeley/
    San Francisco

Multi-authored performance (arranged for eight
    readers by Carla Harryman and Ted Pearson);
    discussion moderated by Jasper Bernes

Holloway Reading Series
Maude Fife Room, Wheeler Hall
University of California, Berkeley
6:30–8:00, Friday, November 18

è   Information here   

Multi-authored performance, preceded by discussion
    on artistic community moderated by David Buuck
Timkin Theater, California College of the Arts
1111 Eighth Street, San Francisco
5:00–7:00, Sunday, November 20

è   Information here   

Spring/Summer 2011 events:

Transatlantic American Studies:
    Democratic Cultures, Past and Present
    Third International Summer Academy
    14–28 May 2011

“Translating Democracy: From The Authoritarian Personality
    to The Baader-Meinhof Complex”
10:00 AM–1:00 PM, 20 May
Bavarian-American Academy (BAA), Munich

BAA Munich and Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany

è   Summer academy information here   

è   Program here    è   Poster here   

Association Française d’Etudes Amériques (AFEA)
    25–28 May 2011

“After Radical Particularity: Language Writing
    and the Untruth of the Whole”
Plenary address, 2:15–3:30 PM, 26 May

Université de Bretagne Occidentale, Brest, France

è   Conference information here   

è   Program here   

Seminar in Contemporary American Poetry
    30 May 2011

“Presentism and Periodization in Language Writing,
    Conceptual Art, and Conceptual Writing”
5:00–7:00 PM, Monday
Université de Paris-Ouest, Nanterre, France

Seminar in Postmodern American Poetry
    6 July 2011

10:00–12:00 AM, Wednesday
Room 07, Schellingstraße 3
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich, Germany

è   American Studies program here   

Conceptions of Collectivity in Contemporary
    American Literature
    7–9 July 2011

“Global Parataxis: Critical Regionalism and Radical
    Particularity”
2:30–4:00 PM, Thursday, 7 July

Universität Mainz, Germany

è   Conference information here   

è   Program here   

Winter 2011 events:

The Alphabet: A Symposium on Ron Silliman's
    Long Poem
    25–26 March 2011
    University of Windsor, Ontario, Canada

“After Radical Particularity: Late Capitalism, Language
    Writing, and The Alphabet”
Keynote address, 9:30–10:45 AM

University of Windsor, Ontario, Canada

è   Conference information here   

è   Program here   

Bathhouse Reading Series
    Eastern Michigan University
    with Eric Lorberer
    18 January 2011

“The Author as Site”
Multi-media presentation

è   Event information here   

Fall 2010 events:

High & Low
EAM (European Network for Avant-Garde
    and Modernist Studies)
    9–12 September 2010

“Jackson Mac Low as Reading Machine:
    Stanzas for Iris Lezak, Sampling, and Print Culture”
9:00–11:00 AM, 11 September

Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan, Poland

è   Conference information here   

è   Abstract here   

Laura (Riding) Jackson in the Twenty-First Century
    28 October 2010

"The House of Language: Laura (Riding) Jackson’s
    Rational Meaning and the Truth of Experience"
11:30 AM–1:30 PM, Thursday, 28 October

Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y.

è   Conference information here   

Modernist Networks
MSA (Modernist Studies Association)
    11–14 November 2010

"Toward a Theory of Sampling: The Social Construction
    of Difficult Texts"

8:30–10:00 AM, Friday, 12 November

University of Victoria, Victoria, B.C., Canada

è   Conference information here   

è   Conference program here   

Bildung in the Twenty-First Century
MSA (Modernist Studies Association)
    19 November 2010

"The Death of Bildung: Radical Pedagogy After
    the Crisis of Representation"

4:20–4:45 PM, Friday, 12 November

Humanities Center, Wayne State University

è   Conference information here   

è   Conference program here   

Recent books:

Diasporic Avant-Gardes: Experimental Poetics
    and Cultural Displacement
    ed. with Carrie Noland

Palgrave Macmillan; publicity/order here

The Constructivist Moment: From Material Text
    to Cultural Poetics

Wesleyan University Press, 2003; publicity/order here

Recipient of the 2004 René Wellek Prize of the American
Comparative Literature Association

è   Information on the award

è   Review in American Literature (December 2005) by Bob Perelman

The Grand Piano, part 1 (November 2006); part 2 (January 2007); part 3
(April 2007); part 4 (July 2007); part 5 (November 2007); part 6 (April 2007);
part 7 (September 2008); part 8 (April 2009); part 9 (September 2009); part X
(September 2010)

An Experiment in Collective Autobiography, San Francisco, 1975–1980,
by Rae Armantrout, Steve Benson, Carla Harryman, Lyn Hejinian,
Tom Mandel, Ted Pearson, Bob Perelman, Kit Robinson, Ron Silliman,
and Barrett Watten

Serial publication by Mode A/This Press began in November 2006 and was completed in September 2010

è   Visit The Grand Piano website here

è   Links to reviews and comments here

è   Subscription/order flyer (color or b&w)

Plasma/Parallèles/“X”
Traduit de l’anglais (Etats-Unis) par Martin Richet

Montréal, P.Q.: Le Quartanier, 2007; French translation of Plasma/Parallels/“X” (Tuumba Press, 1979)

è   Order from Le Quartanier

Progress/Under Erasure

Green Integer, 2005; publicity/order here; flyer here

è   Review of original publication of Progress by Ron Silliman (1985)

è   Facsimile of “Progress” 1 and 2 by Jackson Mac Low (1986)

Recent posts:

è   Archive of posts: time-based writings on poetics, media, politics, and culture, September 2004 to the present

Publications and presentations:

“Berlin Wall/Buchenwald”

In /nor 2 (New Ohio Review, ed. Catherine Taylor; 2007)

è   Online here    Original version here

“Correlation of Paterson, book 1”

In Antennae 9 (ed. Jesse Seldess; Karlsruhe, Ger., 2007)

è   Original online excerpt here

“Modernism at the Crossroads: Types of Negative Example”

In Modernism, ed. Vivian Liska and Astradur Eysteinsson (Amsterdam: John Benjamins/International Comparative Literature Association, 2007)

è   Ordering information here

“Radical Particularity, Critical Regionalism, and the Resistance to Globalization”

Presented at a panel on “Marxism, Poetics, and Spatial Formation,” Modernist Studies Association, Long Beach, Calif., November 2007

è   Text as presented here

“The Expanded Object of the Poetic Field; or, What Is a Poet/Critic?”

Keynote address, Poetry and Public Language, University of Plymouth, U.K., March 2007; in Poetry and Public Language, ed. Tony Lopez and Anthony Caleshu (Exeter, U.K.: Shearsman Press, 2007)

è   Publicity flyer/ordering information here

“Translating Authority: Adorno’s Cultural Work in The Authoritarian Personality”

Lecture presented at the Humanities Center Winter Symposium, Wayne State University, March 2007; Universität Frankfurt, June 2006; Authorship and the Turn to Language, Universität Tübingen, December 2005

“On the Advantages and Disadvantages of Negativity for Life”

Keynote address, Undergraduate Conference, University of Windsor, Ontario, Canada, March 2007; Department of English, University of Minnesota, February 2007; The Slought Foundation, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, November 2006

“Poetics in the Expanded Field: Textual, Visual, Digital . . .”

In New Media Poetics: Contexts, Technotexts, and Theories, ed. Adalaide Morris and Thomas Swiss (MIT Press, 2006);

è   Publicity flyer/order form here

“Foucault Reads Acker and Rewrites the History of the Novel”

In Lust for Life: On the Writings of Kathy Acker, ed. Carla Harryman, Avital Ronnel, and Amy Scholder (Verso, 2006)

è   Publicity flyer/order form here

è   Review in Los Angeles City Beat

“Affects Break into Simulcast: Toward a Poetics of Critical Intervention”

Review of Ugly Feelings, by Sianne Ngai; In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition, by Fred Moten; and Simulcast: Four Experiments in Criticism, by Ben Friedlander, Iowa Journal of Cultural Studies (October 2006)

“Franco/Luambo Makiadi’s Universalism”

Lecture presented at the Humanities Center, Wayne State University, November 2006; at a conference on Diasporic Avant-Gardes: Experimental Poetics and Cultural Dislocation, University of California, Irvine, November 2004

“Against Ekphrasis”

Lecture sponsored by the Department of English, Writers’ Workshop, and Intermedia Studies Program, University of Iowa, October 2006

“Transposing the Limits of Organic Form: Language Writing and Anthony Braxton”

Presented at a conference on Current Free Practices in Music and Poetry, New York University, March 2006

è   Original online version here

“Global Conceptualism: Conceptual Art, Universals, the Avant-Garde”

Presented at American Comparative Literature Association Conference, Pennsylvania State University, March 2005

“Cold War Universals and the Poetics of Displacement”

Presented at a conference on Post-Soviet Culture and Theory, Duke University, March 2005

è   All books          è   All articles

Course offerings:

Winter 2008

English 5460, Topics in 20th-Century American Literature:
"Transnational Modernisms"

English 3140, Survey of American Literature: "Constructions
of American Literature, Progressive Era to Globalization"

è   Past syllabi       è   All courses

Readings and events:

Seminars in Paris and Lyon
    12–14 October 2009

5:30 PM, 12 October 2009, Room A50
Institut Charles V, Université Paris-Diderot
10, rue Charles V, 75004 Paris

è   Flyer here   

2:00 PM, 13 October 2009, Université Lyon 2

3:00 PM, 14 October 2009, Centre d’études poétiques (CEP)
Ecole normale supérieure Lettres et sciences humaines (ENS)
15, Parvis René Descartes, 69007 Lyon

ASAP/Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present
    23–24 October 2009

"Toward a Theory of Sampling: The Social Construction
    of Difficult Texts"
Panel on "Avant-Garde Poetics and Pedagogy"
    with Alan Golding and Megan Swihart Jewell
8:00–9:30 AM, Friday, 23 October, Cumberland Room

"Presentism and Periodization in Language Writing,
    Conceptual Art, and Conceptual Writing"
Panel on "Post-Presentism"
    with Jonathan Eburne
8:00–9:30 AM, Saturday, 24 October, Salon C

Crowne Plaza Hotel, Knoxville, TN

Lectures and reading in Florida
    16–20 November 2009

"Haunted by Possibility: Laura Riding's Poetry and After"
10 AM–12 PM, Monday, November 16
Media Room, Indian River County Main Library

"The House of Language: Laura (Riding) Jackson's Rational Meaning
    and the Truth of Experience"
10 AM–12 PM, Wednesday, November 18
Laura Riding Jackson House/Environmental Learning Center

    Vero Beach, FL; sponsored by Florida Atlantic University
    and the Laura Riding Jackson Foundation

Reading from The Grand Piano and poetry
Florida Atlantic University
[time t/k], Thursday, November 19

“Nonsite Parataxis: Ulf Stolterfoht’s Fachsprachen
    and John Ashbery’s ‘Europe’”
Department of English, University of Miami
[time t/k], Friday, November 20

Ron Silliman & Tracie Morris
Reading/Performance at WSU

3:00–5:00 PM, 26 October 2007, Welcome Center Auditorium
Warren and Woodward Avenues, Wayne State University

Preceded by an informal talk by Ron Silliman
on the politics and poetics of Silliman’s Blog
1:00–2:30, English Department Conference Room 10304
5057 Woodward Avenue, Wayne State University

è   Press release here    è   Flyer here

Polis Is This: Charles Olson and the Persistence of Place
a screening of the film by Henry Ferrini

Screening and discussion with the filmmaker
3:00–5:00 PM, 19 October 2007, Welcome Center Auditorium
Warren and Woodward Avenues, Wayne State University

è   Press release here    è   Flyer here

Barrett Watten & Andrew Levy
at the Bowery Poetry Club

4:00–6:00 PM, 13 October 2007
308 Bowery, New York

è   Calendar here    è   MP3 [to come]

University of Minnesota lecture and reading February 9–10

“On the Advantages and Disadvantages of Negativity for Life”
3:00–4:30 PM, 9 February 2007, Department of English
207A Lind Hall, UM’s East Bank, University of Minnesota

Slought Foundation talk November 10

6:30–8-00 PM, 10 November 2006, The Slought Foundation
4017 Walnut Street, Philadelphia; info here

Temple University reading November 9

Department of English, Temple University
7:00 PM, 9 November 2006

Wayne State University Humanities Center talk October 31

“Franco Luambo Makiadi’s Universalism”
12:30 PM, 31 October 2006, 2339 F/AB; flyer here

è   Archive of events: lectures, readings, conferences, panels, and hosted programs at Wayne State University 

Conferences and programs:

Modernist Studies Association
1–4 November 2007, The Westin, Long Beach

“Radical Particularity, Critical Regionalism, and the Resistance to Globalization”; in “Marxism, Poetics, and Spatial Formation,” organized by Barrett Watten (Wayne SU) and Ruth Jennison (U Massachusetts); Michael Davidson (UCSD), chair; with Ruth Jennison, Carrie Noland (UC Irvine), and Barrett Watten

Thursday, 4:00–5:30, Centennial Ballroom, Salon D

è   Conference program here   

American Comparative Literature Association

“Radical Particularity and the Resistance to Globalization”
In “A New Global Poetics?,” organized by Jacob Edmunds
19–22 April 2007; Puebla, Mexico; info t/k

Poetry and Public Language, University of Plymouth

Keynote address: “The Field of Poetics; or, What Is a Poet/Critic?”
Department of English, University of Plymouth, U.K.
30 March–1 April 2007; info t/k

Undergraduate Conference, University of Windsor

Keynote address: “On the Advantages and Disadvantages of Negativity for Life”
University of Windsor, Windsor, Ontario, Canada
24 March 2007; info t/k

WSU Humanities Center Winter Symposium

“Translating Authority: Adorno’s Cultural Work in The Authoritarian Personality”
23 March 2007; info t/k

Modern Language Association, Philadelphia

“Poetics and Cultural Studies: Engaging the Debate”: Barrett Watten, presiding, with Ruth Jennison (U Massachusetts), Eric Keenaghan (SUNY Albany), Jeffrey Nealon (Penn State U), and Tyrone Williams (Xavier U); session proposal here

“The F Scale”: presentation for a panel on “Processing Pound,” with Ben Friedlander (U Maine), Rachel Blau DuPlessis (Temple U) and Jennifer Scappetone (Chicago)

“Twentieth-Century American Poet’s Theater”: Heidi R. Bean, U Iowa, presiding, with Sarah T. Bay-Cheng, SUNY Buffalo; Carla Harryman, Wayne State U; and Laura Hinton, CUNY

Modernist Studies Association, Tulsa

“New Directions in Poetics,” a panel with Maria Damon (U Minnesota), George Hartley (Ohio U), Joel Tyler Nickels (UC Berkeley), and Sarah Ruddy (Wayne State U)

20 October 2006, Doubletree Hotel, Tulsa; sponsored by the National Poetry Foundation and Paideuma
è   Program    

Current Free Practices in Music and Poetry

A one-day colloquium of new music composers, musicologists, poets, and literary critics

25 March 2006, Department of Music, New York University

è   Program     è   Paper presented

Authorship and the Turn to Language

An international conference on language-centered authorship and postmodern culture

1–4 December 2005, Universität Tübingen, Germany

è   Program     è   Brochure

Robert Creeley in Memory

Tributes by Carla Harryman, Kathryne Lindberg, Glen Mannisto, Ken Mikolowski, Ted Pearson, George Tysh, and Barrett Watten

20 April 2005, Wayne State University

è   Program   

Post-Soviet Culture + Theory

American and Russian scholars and critics discussing the literature, cinema, visual art, and intellectual history of post-Soviet Russia

25-26 February 2005, Institute for Critical Theory, Duke University

è   Program   

Diasporic Avant-Gardes: Experimental Poetics and Cultural Displacement

An international conference on the work of diasporic and avant-garde poets from North America, Mexico, France, the U.K., and the Caribbean

19-20 November 2004, University of California, Irvine

è   Program     è   Flyer

Poetries of the 1940s, American and International

23–27 June 2004, University of Maine, Orono

è   Program     è   “Tribute to Zukofsky”

Links:

[t/k]