Guest Lecture Karen Karbiener (New York University)

“Everywoman’s Walt Whitman”

Walt Whitman’s friendships with many notable leaders of the progressive women’s rights movement is well-documented. But what effect did Whitman’s poetry, which transgressed gender and sexual norms of the nineteenth-century, have on everyday female readers? This presentation answers this question through discussion of the material archive left by Whitman readers and through analysis of two archival items in particular: a single daguerreotype of a woman holding Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, and a sketchbook inspired by Whitman’s poetry.

Karen Karbiener (New York University) is an American scholar, writer, curator, and cultural activist. Her work on the poet Walt Whitman combines elements of material culture studies, archival research, and cultural biography. She has written widely and curated several exhibitions on Whitman’s New York years and the ways in which Whitman’s experience of the material world shaped his life and art. She is also the president and a founding member of the Walt Whitman Initiative.

Poster