Prof. Brian Edwards, The World, The Text and the Americanist
The international conference “Alternative Realities: New Challenges for American Literature in the Era of Trump” kicked off on Friday 13 December 2019 with panels on dystopian fiction and Latinx narratives, followed by a keynote address by Prof. Aleksandar Hemon (Princeton University), “Writing the Unimaginable,” which was supported by the Visiting Fellowship programme of the UCD Institute for Discovery.
Listen to Professor Hemon's keynote with an introduction by Clinton Institute's Director, Professor Liam Kennedy.
The day was closed with a second keynote in the evening by Chris Beckett, “Good Guys and Bad Guys: Thoughts from a Writer’s Perspective,” followed by a reception where scholars and grad students from Europe and North America got to know each other over a glass of wine. The second day included the conference’s third keynote address by Karen E. Bender (Hollins University), titled “Fiction as Warning, Witness and Mirror: Reading from Stories in The New Order.”
The conference was closed at the Museum of Literature of Ireland (MoLI) with a public event open to the general public, “What to Read (and Write) in the Era of Trump? Aleksandar Hemon, Chris Beckett, and Karen E. Bender in Conversation,” where the three speakers shared some thoughts on reading and writing and the current literary scene.
