Meredith McGill on Ballads and the Concept of Format
Please join us at 1pm on Friday October 11th for a discussion of, and with, Meredith McGill (Beinecke Library Distinguished Fellow in the Humanities, 2019-2020; Professor of English, Rutgers). We will meet in LC (Linsly-Chittenden) 319.
We’ll be focusing on a recent essay about the idea of the “ballad” – an important term for recent work in poetics. Meredith has offered two other pieces: a short essay on the concept of “format” in early American studies, and another on reinterpretations of Frances E. Watkins Harper. She suggests, as background reading for her theory of format, the intro to Jonathan Sterne’s 2012 MP3: The Meaning of a Format. These latter pieces are a bonus, but people should not feel an expectation of covering all the reading! Meredith will be showing us some of her archival research as well.
Light lunch will be provided: please RSVP to naomi.levine@yale.edu so we know how much food to get. Readings are all available under “Readings and Resources.”