End of Biography: Purpose, Promise, Prospects March 18, 2010

End of Biography: Purpose, Promise, ProspectsThe Annual Conference
March 19th 2010, Friday, 10:30am-6:00pm, Elebash Recital Hall



Why read biography? For information? Aesthetic pleasure? What can biography contribute to a compassionate knowledge of our world, what understanding of ourselves or of the past? What is its relation to the said and the not-said? Mull over these questions at the Second Annual Conference of Leon Levy Center for Biography, with distinguished guests including keynote speaker Arnold Rampersad (Stanford, and author of acclaimed biographies of Langston Hughes, Jackie Robinson, and Ralph Ellison).

Other participants include Catherine Clinton (Queens University Belfast, Mrs. Lincoln: A Life), Gary Giddins (CUNY, Jazz), Molly Haskell (film critic, Frankly, My Dear), Langdon Hammer (Yale, Hart Crane and Allen Tate), Richard Howard (Columbia, Pulitzer prize winning poet, translator, essayist), Caryn James (film critic, What Catherine Knew), D.T. Max (New Yorker), Jed Perl (art critic, The New Republic; Antoine’s Alphabet), Andrew Sarris (prize-winning film critic, The American Cinema), Eric Salzman (composer, The New Music Theater), Ileene Smith (editor-at-large, Yale University Press), Amanda Vaill (Somewhere: The Life of Jerome Robbins), Steve Wasserman (literary agent, former editor of the LA Times Book Review), and Brenda Wineapple (Director of the Leon Levy Center for Biography, White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson).

Check leonlevycenterforbiography.org for updates, schedule, and a list of other participants. Or contact the Leon Levy Center for Biography at [email protected] This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , 212-817-2008.



Co-sponsored by the Leon Levy Center for Biography