St. Olaf College English Department's Contemporary Writers Series Welcomes Susan McCabe

Susan McCabe – distinguished film studies scholar, literary critic, and poet – visits St. Olaf College on April 8-9, 2009 as part of the Contemporary Writers Series sponsored by the English Department, Women’s Studies, the Boldt Chair, and the generosity of the Robert P. Leraas Fund.

Susan McCabe currently directs the University of Southern California’s PhD in Literature and Creative Writing Program, and has been President of the Modernist Studies Association. She is the author of four books, including two critical studies—Elizabeth Bishop: Her Poetics of Loss (Penn State University Press, 1994) and Cinematic Modernism: Modern Poetry and Film (Cambridge University Press, 2005)—and two poetry volumes, Swirl (Red Hen Press, 2003), and Descartes’ Nightmare (winner of the Agha Shahid Ali prize and published by Utah University Press in 2008). Her scholarship has primarily focused on modern and contemporary poetry and poetics, with an emphasis on modernism, gender studies and film; her creative writing builds upon many of the motifs found in her research. McCabe’s research in 20th and 21st century poetry has been a major source for her creative projects.

Her current research, however, marks a transition from writing in the genres of scholarly criticism and poetry to biography: a first full-length study, Bryher: Female Husband of Modernism. An ambassador and pioneer in modernism, Bryher, the illegitimate daughter of a shipping magnate, had a significant presence in diverse areas—modern poetry, cinema, psychoanalysis, and gender politics, all areas engaged by McCabe's writing thus far. McCabe received a Beinecke Fellowship at Yale to conduct research at the library's enormous archive of Bryher's writing and correspondence. McCabe has been awarded the Provost’s “Advancing Scholarship in the Humanities and the Sciences” (2007-8) to focus upon Bryher’s myriad “triangles” within modernism. Simultaneously, McCabe is finishing another book of poems, called Cry of Players, a collection focused upon the voices of the dead, and the uneasy intersections between the technological and the so-called natural.

Susan McCabe is available for interviews during her visit.

All events are free and open to the public and take place at St. Olaf College, 1510 St. Olaf Avenue, Northfield, MN 55407.

“Film Screening: Borderline”
April 7, 2009 | 7:00-9:00 p.m. | Room 150 Regents New Science Hall

“Poetry Reading and Book Signing”
April 8, 2009 | 4:00-5:30 p.m. | Room 525 Rolvaag Memorial Library

“Film Studies Lecture: Transferential Montage: From Borderline to Hitchcock”
April 8, 2009 | 7:30-9:00 p.m. | Viking Auditorium in Buntrock Commons