BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//events.la.psu.edu//EN CALSCALE:GREGORIAN BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:America/New_York BEGIN:STANDARD DTSTART:20201101T020000 TZOFFSETFROM:-0400 TZOFFSETTO:-0500 RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=11;BYDAY=1SU END:STANDARD BEGIN:DAYLIGHT DTSTART:20200308T020000 TZOFFSETFROM:-0500 TZOFFSETTO:-0400 RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=3;BYDAY=2SU END:DAYLIGHT END:VTIMEZONE BEGIN:VEVENT UID:13289-1cb285c6cd6e03c75890402df020afa6@events.la.psu.edu DTSTAMP:20260624T163546Z DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20231016T123000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20231016T133000 SUMMARY:“\'Unlearning\' Culture” DESCRIPTION:\nThe Comparative Literature Luncheon Series presents: “'Unl earning' Culture”\n\nBeth Blum (Harvard University)\n\nSee the event fly er\n\nBeth Blum teaches modern and contemporary literature at Harvard Un iversity\, where she is the Harris K Weston Associate Professor of the H umanities. Her book\, The Self-Help Compulsion: Searching for Advice in Modern Literature was published in 2020 with Columbia University Press. She has published academic articles in PMLA\, MLQ\, Modernism/modernity\ , and American Literary History\, and public-facing essays in Aeon Magaz ine\, The New Yorker\, and The Chronicle of Higher Education\, among oth er places. She is the British and Anglophone Book Reviews editor for the journal Comparative Literature.\n\nIn the past decade\, calls for “unle arning” have reached unprecedented prominence in both public and academi c spheres. In the field of American self-help\, “intentional unlearning” has become almost a subgenre unto itself with publications such as Unle arn: Let Go of Past Success to Achieve (2018)\; Relational Reset: Unlear ning the Habits that Hold You Back (2019)\; Unlearning the Ropes: The Be nefits of Rethinking what School Teaches You (2021)\, and too many other s to list. The trend also informs literary criticism. Jack Halberstam\, in a 2012 MLA address\, exhorts us to “unlearn the wisdom of the past an d substitute wild forms of experimentation for domesticated tried-and-tr ue traditions of thought.” Franco Moretti maintains that “unlearning” is what his “distant reading” enables\, while post-critique manifestoes hi nge on the trope of “unlearning” professional reading habits. This talk traces the discourse of unlearning—and its concomitant undermining of sc holarly forms of education and attention—from Buddhist ideals of “decond itioning” that gained American traction in the 1960s\, through to academ ic satires of DH Lawrence and Zadie Smith\, and up to the contemporary p henomenon of YouTube reaction videos. I suggest that the concept’s conte mporary vogueishness obfuscates the role that unlearning has always play ed in humanist methods and thought.\n\nFor more details: https://events. la.psu.edu/event/unlearning-culture/ X-ALT-DESC;FMTTYPE=text/html:

The Comparative Literature Luncheon Series presents: “'Unlearning' Culture”
Beth B lum (Harvard University)

Beth Blum teaches modern and contemporary literature a t Harvard University, where she is the Harris K Weston Associate Profess or of the Humanities. Her book, The Self-Help Compulsion: Searching for Advice in Modern Literature was published in 2020 with Columbia University Press. She has published academic articles in PMLA, MLQ, Modernism/modernity, and American Literary H istory, and public-facing essays in Aeon Magazine, The New Yorker, and The Chronicle of Higher Education, among other places. She is the British and Anglophone Book Reviews editor for the journal Comparative Literature.

In the past decade, c alls for “unlearning” have reached unprecedented prominence in both publ ic and academic spheres. In the field of American self-help, “intentiona l unlearning” has become almost a subgenre unto itself with publications such as Unlearn: Let Go of Past Success to Achieve (2018); Relational Reset: Unlearning the Habits that Hold You Back (2019); Unlearning the Ropes: The Benefits of Rethinking what School Teache s You (2021), and too many others to list. The trend also informs l iterary criticism. Jack Halberstam, in a 2012 MLA address, exhorts us to “unlearn the wisdom of the past and substitute wild forms of experiment ation for domesticated tried-and-true traditions of thought.” Franco Mor etti maintains that “unlearning” is what his “distant reading” enables, while post-critique manifestoes hinge on the trope of “unlearning” profe ssional reading habits. This talk traces the discourse of unlearning—and its concomitant undermining of scholarly forms of education and attenti on—from Buddhist ideals of “deconditioning” that gained American tractio n in the 1960s, through to academic satires of DH Lawrence and Zadie Smi th, and up to the contemporary phenomenon of YouTube reaction videos. I suggest that the concept’s contemporary vogueishness obfuscates the role that unlearning has always played in humanist methods and thought.

< p>For more details: https://events.la.psu.edu/event/unlearning-culture/

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