The Topographical Parenthesis: Henry James’s Spaces of Desire
Dynamic Peer Review Seminar with Peter Coviello and Beth McLean, Thursday 24 February, 10:00-11:30am AEDT
In this online seminar, early career researcher Dr Elizabeth McLean (The University of Melbourne) will present her unpublished book manuscript, The Topographical Parenthesis: Henry James’s Spaces of Desire for dynamic peer review by Professor Peter Coviello (University of Illinois Chicago). The discussion will be hosted by Professor Clara Tuite (The University of Melbourne) and questions and observations will be invited from audience members.
Location: Online through Zoom meeting software. This is a free event - to gain access, please use the following Zoom link and password:
Join from PC, Mac, iOS or Android: https://unimelb.zoom.us/j/86747182059?pwd=TXcvVXBIcmhrUVNIakM3dkplTm5vQT09
Password: 551419
Speaker bios:
Professor Peter Coviello specializes in American literature and queer theory. His research considers the entangled histories of empire and intimacy in nineteenth-century America, with particular attention to questions of secularism, biopolitics, and sex.
He is the author of five books. These include Intimacy in America: Dreams of Affiliation in Antebellum Literature (Minnesota, 2005), Tomorrow’s Parties: Sex and the Untimely in Nineteenth-Century America (NYU, 2013) – a finalist for Lambda Literary Award in LGBT Studies and honorable mention for the Alan Bray Memorial Book Prize – and Long Players: A Love Story in Eighteen Songs (Penguin Books), selected as one of ARTFORUM’s “Best Books of 2018.” He is the editor of Walt Whitman’s Memoranda During the War (Oxford, 2004), Herman Melville’s Billy Budd, Bartleby, and Other Stories (Penguin. 2016), and co-editor of a special issue of American Literature, from 2014, entitled “After the Postsecular.” He has written about Phillis Wheatley, queer children, pop songs, prayer, the history of sexuality, stepparenthood, race and psychoanalysis, polygamy, and, more than a few times, Prince. This work has appeared in PMLA, Raritan, ELH, GLQ, and MLQ, as well as in venues like Frieze, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Avidly, Public Books, Elle, and The Believer. In 2017-18, he was on fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Study, in Princeton.
In 2019, Make Yourselves Gods: Mormons and The Unfinished Business of American Secularism, appeared from the University of Chicago Press, in the "Class 200" Series, and was subsequently nominated for the 2020 John Whitmer Historical Association Best Book Prize.
His next book, Vineland Reread, will be published this winter by Columbia University Press, inaugurating the "Rereading" series.
Dr Elizabeth McLean is an early career researcher and a teaching associate at the University of Melbourne. Her research ranges from the late nineteenth century through to the contemporary, with a strong focus on narratology, space and domesticity. She was awarded her PhD in 2019 for her dissertation, “The Topographical Parenthesis: Articulations of Space in the Novels of Henry James.” She is in the process of converting this project to a book. She is also currently working on a trans-historical account of women’s literary journalism, and has been studying the non-fiction work of Charmian Clift.