Tuesday, April 8, 7:30 p.m.
102 Kern Building
Community Read Discussion Session
Community Read Discussion Session of A Farewell to Arms facilitated by assistant professor Linda Selzer and professor Robert Caserio, Penn State Department of English.
Wednesday, April 16, 7:30 p.m.
Foster Auditorium
Mr. Jonathan Bank, Artistic Director, Mint Theater, New York, New York
"The Fifth Column and Love Goes to Press"
Beginning in February of 2008, Mr. Bank’s Mint Theater will present Ernest Hemingway’s little-known play of the Spanish Civil War, The Fifth Column, a work written in 1937 that has not been produced for the stage since 1940. Mr. Bank will speak about the thwarted production history of the play and compare it to a play written by Hemingway’s wife of the 1940s, war correspondent and novelist Martha Gellhorn. Gellhorn’s play, Love Goes to Press: A Comedy in Three Acts, written shortly after their divorce, was a hit on the London stage in 1946 and a flop on Broadway. Both wartime plays present characters recognizable as Hemingway and Gellhorn. With the help of two students from the Penn State School of Theater who will act brief scenes from both works, Mr. Bank will bring the conversation between Hemingway and Gellhorn to life.
Thursday, April 17, 7:30 p.m.
Foster Auditorium
Dr. Susan Beegel
“Hemingway’s Personal Farewell to Arms”
Susan Beegel holds a Ph.D. in English from Yale University and is adjunct associate professor of English at the University of Idaho. For fifteen years, she has edited The Hemingway Review, a scholarly journal published by the Ernest Hemingway Foundation. Beegel is the author or editor of three books as well as more than fifty articles on Ernest Hemingway, other writers, and various aspects of American literature and history. Beegel’s talk will address how Hemingway altered autobiographical materials to create A Farewell to Arms, one of his most compelling fictions. Her lecture will explore the causes and nature of World War I, Hemingway's service as an ambulance driver on the Italian front, his wounding, and his love affair with nurse Agnes von Kurowsky during his recuperation in a Milan hospital.
Friday, April 18, 7:30 p.m.
Ballroom, Atherton Hotel
Community Read Gala Roundtable:
Reading Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms
A catered reception will follow the gala for all who attend.
The gala will include the following scholars.
Featuring Professor Sandra Spanier, Penn State University
Spanier’s work on A Farewell to Arms has focused on the enigmatic and controversial character of Catherine Barkley. Spanier will begin the evening by offering her comments on Barkley’s role in the novel, considering the World War I context, Hemingway’s theories of composition, and what the unpublished manuscripts reveal.
Debra Moddelmog, The Ohio State University
Debra Moddelmog is professor of English and coordinator of the Sexuality Studies Program at Ohio State University. She specializes in twentieth-century American fiction, with a focus on the intersections of gender, sexuality, race, class, and nation. The author of two monographs and numerous articles, her most recent book, Reading Desire: In Pursuit of Ernest Hemingway (Cornell 1999), has been translated into Japanese. She earned her Ph.D. in English from Penn State in 1985.
Professor Robert W. Trogdon, Kent State University
Robert W. Trogdon is an associate professor of English at Kent State University and director of the university's Institute for Bibliography and Editing. His most recent book is The Lousy Racket: Hemingway, Scribners and the Business of Literature (2007), a study of Ernest Hemingway's professional relationship with his primary American publisher. He is also the editor of Ernest Hemingway: A Literary Reference (1999) and co-editor of The Only Thing That Counts: The Ernest Hemingway/Maxwell Perkins Correspondence, 1925–1947 (1996). Currently, he serves as associate executive editor of the Cambridge Edition of the Works of Joseph Conrad and is heading the editorial team producing Volume 1 of the Cambridge Edition of the Letters of Ernest Hemingway.
Susan F. Beegel, University of Idaho
Susan F. Beegel holds a Ph.D. in English from Yale University and is adjunct associate professor of English at the University of Idaho. For fifteen years, she has edited The Hemingway Review, a scholarly journal published by the Ernest Hemingway Foundation. Beegel is the author or editor of three books as well as more than fifty articles on Ernest Hemingway, other writers, and various aspects of American literature and history. She has appeared on-camera in several television documentaries about Hemingway, and worked behind the scenes on others. Her most recent television appearance to discuss Hemingway was filmed live from Key West for C-SPAN's American Masters series. A library trustee for many years, she is an enthusiast of Community Reads, and was recently chosen by the National Endowment for the Arts for their "Big Read" radio program and CD on A Farewell to Arms. She is currently at work for W. W. Norton on condensing and updating Michael Reynolds's five-volume biography of Ernest Hemingway into a single volume.