The Existential Turn: A Symposium

Duke's Center for Philosophy, Arts, and Literature presents a two-day seminar on first-person modes of fictional writing that have emerged in the twenty-first century.

The symposium will take place in person from 9am-5pm on Friday April 1, and 9am-5pm on Saturday April 2 at the Ahmadieh Family Lecture Hall, Smith Warehouse, Bay 4, C105

Featuring two special "Reading Together" sessions led by:
-Tope Folarin (Georgetown, novelist). We will discuss his novel A Particular Kind of Black Man
-James Wood (Harvard, The New Yorker) will lead a discussion on Annie Ernaux's The Years.

Speakers include:
-Marta Figlerowicz (Yale): "Autofiction, Anthropology, and the Other"
-Heather Love (UPenn): "Moments of personal writing in classic queer theory."
-Claus Andersen (UW-Madison): "Is Autofiction Fictional? The Case of Knausgård."
-James Cobb (UNC Chapel Hill): "The Existential Turn in Black Autotheory"
-Robyn Wiegman (Duke): "Autotheory's (Auto)Fictions"
-Yi-Ping Ong (Hopkins): "The Hum of the Own: Kierkegaard, Knausgaard, and Nelson on Existence in the Present Age"
-Toril Moi (Duke): "The Past and Future of Autofiction"