TITLE: Walt Whitman, Rural New Yorker
SPEAKER: Karen Karbiener
EVENT DATE: 06/24/2010
RUNNING TIME: 77 minutes
DESCRIPTION:
Kluge fellow Karen Karbiener delivers a lecture entitled "Walt Whitman, Rural New Yorker." A boy from rural Long Island moves to Brooklyn and, without money or mentorship, conceives, writes, and self-publishes America's declaration of cultural independence. This story remains one of the great mysteries of American literary scholarship. How did Walter Whitman - grammar school dropout and second son of a farmer-turned-carpenter - become Walt Whitman? This lecture will focus on the most obscure yet most seminal period of Whitman's life: his childhood and youth on his beloved "Paumanok," where he claims to have been born as a poet.
Speaker Biography: Karen Karbiener is a Whitman scholar who teaches at New York University. She has curated public exhibits on Whitman and organized Whitman-related events in New York.
