Keynote Speaker: 7th Annual Conference
We are pleased to welcome Renée Bergland, Professor of English, Simmons College, as our keynote speaker for the 7th Annual Graduate Student Conference. Bergland earned her PhD in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University in 1997. She has taught at the University of the District of Columbia, Marymount University, the University of New Hampshire, Boston University and Dartmouth College, before coming to Simmons in 1999. At Simmons, Bergland teaches a wide range of courses in nineteenth and twentieth-century American Literature. She is particularly interested in Native American Studies, Cultural Studies, and Gender Studies. She also teaches in the Graduate Consortium in Women’s and Gender Studies, and holds a research appointment in Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Harvard University. Professor Berlgand’s work tends to span broad expanses of time, to offer slightly startling juxtapositions, to rely on close readings of both literary and historical texts, and to explicitly advocate a dialogic ethics of analysis, while trying to connect the past to the present. Her writing always reflects my commitments to transnational, transhistorical, cross-cultural analysis. (Read her full bio here)
Because of the interdisciplinary nature of this conference, we are looking forward to Professor Bergland’s contribution as someone whose work often attempts to think outside disciplinary bounds.
(also see the Call for Papers)
