Please see the following conference program:
Celebrating Gary Saul Morson: Humanistic Traditions in Russian Thought and Literature
Northwestern University Research Initiative in Russian Philosophy, Literature, and Religious Thought
Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences
Friday, April 19
8:30–9:45 Breakfast and Registration
(Harris Hall 108, Leopold Room)
9:45–10:15 Welcome
Remarks by Provost Kathleen Hagerty, Dean Adrian Randolph
Remarks by Susan McReynolds, Randall Poole, Brad Underwood
10:15–12:00 Session One, Panel 1 (Harris)
12:00–1:30 Lunch (Harris)
Remarks by Daniel Lowenstein (UCLA)
Remarks by Matthew Morrison, MD (Yale)
Remarks by President Emeritus Morton Schapiro (Northwestern)
1:30–3:00 Session Two, Panel 2 (Harris) and Panel 3 (University Hall 201, Hagstrum Room) (concurrent)
3:00–3:30 Coffee (Harris)
3:30–5:00 Session Three, Panel 4 (Harris) and Panel 5 (Hagstrum) (concurrent)
7:00–9:00 Dinner (Harris)
Remarks by President Michael Schill (Northwestern) (tentative)
Remarks by President Emeritus Henry Bienen (Northwestern)
Gary Saul Morson on Vekhi/Landmarks: Open Humanism in Russian Thought Randall A. Poole (College of St. Scholastica)
Concluding remarks by Emily Morson
Saturday, April 20
8:00–9:00 Breakfast (Scott Hall, Guild Lounge)
Remarks by Peter Winsky: Northwestern University Forum in Russian
Philosophy, Literature, and Religious Thought
9:00–10:30 Session Four, Panel 6 (Guild)
10:30–12:00 Session Five, Panel 7 (Guild) and Panel 8 (Harris) (concurrent)
12:00–1:30 Lunch (Harris)
Remarks by Julio M. Ottino (Northwestern)
Remarks by Barbara J. O’Keefe (Northwestern)
Remarks by Daniel Diermeier (Vanderbilt)
1:30–3:00 Session Six, Panel 9 (Guild)
3:00–3:30 Coffee (Guild)
3:30–5:00 Session Seven, Panel 10 (Guild)
6:30–8:30 Dinner (Guild)
Plays: Chekhov, Three Sisters, and Alicia Chudo, The Dodo (Directed by Ethan Karas ’25 and Theo Gyra ’25)
Gary Saul Morson and the Teaching of Literature Susan McReynolds (Northwestern University)
Concluding remarks by Susan McReynolds, Randall Poole, and Brad Underwood
For their generous support of this conference, we gratefully acknowledge the Gladys Krieble
Delmas Foundation (New York, NY), the Keston Institute (Durham, U.K.), and the Weinberg
College of Arts and Sciences at Northwestern University.
Friday
Session One 10:15–12:00
Panel 1 (Harris)
Wonder Confronts Certainty: Main Ideas and Insights Donna Tussing Orwin (University of Toronto)
Reflections on Wonder and Certainty Sanford C. Goldberg (Northwestern University)
Teaching Literature in a Post-Theory Age Carol Apollonio (Duke University)
Aphorism as a Laboratory of Thinking: Through the Prisms of Natural and Artificial Intelligence Mikhail Epstein (Emory University)
Session Two 1:30–3:00
Panel 2 (Harris)
Returning to Anna Karenina Frances Brent (writer and poet, New York)
Translating Anna Karenina with Gary Saul Morson Marian Schwartz (Russian literary translator, Austin, Texas)
Android Karenina and the Prosaics of Steampunk Timothy Langen (University of Missouri)
Panel 3 (Hagstrum)
Starting Small: Morson’s Prosaics and the Person Ana Siljak (University of Florida)
Art is for seeing the (extra)ordinary: Tolstoy and Prosaics Ana Matoso (Universidade Católica Portuguesa, Lisbon)
Prosaics in the Face of the Apocalyptic: Searching for Hope in Russian Literature Denis A. Zhernokleyev (Vanderbilt University)
Session Three 3:30–5:00
Panel 4 (Harris)
On Spending Time with the Dead Yuri Corrigan (Boston University)
“What Is It Like to Be a Double?” Morson on Persons and Consciousness Brian Armstrong (Augusta University)
The Underground and Gary Saul Morson Bradley Underwood (Northwestern University)
Panel 5 (Hagstrum)
Two Poles of Poetry: Pushkin and Tyutchev in the Eyes of Andrei Bely and Vyacheslav Ivanov Dmitry Biriukov (Free University of Berlin)
Empathy and Aesthetics in the Early 20th Century Stephen H. Blackwell (University of Tennessee, Knoxville)
Performativity in Soviet Literature – and Before Thomas Seifrid (University of Southern California)
Saturday
Session Four 9:00–10:30
Panel 6 (Guild)
On Human Nature & the Human Body: How Gary Saul Morson Has Helped Me in the Practice of Medicine Tod Worner, M.D. (Abbott Northwestern General Medicine Associates, Edina, Minnesota)
Tolstoyevsky in the Time of COVID Leah Flack (Marquette University)
We Shall not Cease from Exploration: The Lessons of Literature in the Context of a Non-Academic Career Dr. Lindsay Sargent Berg (Microsoft Corp., Seattle, Washington)
Session Five 10:30–12:00
Panel 7 (Guild)
Alyosha Accepts Wonder: Dostoevsky’s Prudential, Incarnational Realism Paul Contino (Pepperdine University)
Temporality and Personhood: The Second Novels of Alyosha Karamazov Octavian Gabor (Methodist College)
The Meek Literary Type and the Ordinary in Tolstoy’s War and Peace Jillian Pignataro (Northwestern University)
Panel 8 (Harris)
“Away from the Absolute”: Friedrich Schlegel’s Concept of Narrative Freedom Boris Gasparov (Columbia University)
Criminal Blade and Fallen Purple: Pushkin’s Ideas of Freedom in 1817 G. M. Hamburg (Claremont McKenna College)
Narrative, Freedom, and Sideshadowing Nina Gourianova (Northwestern University)
Session Six 1:30–3:00
Panel 9 (Guild)
Between Good and Evil: The Ethics of Dealing with the Devil Andrew Wachtel (Compass College of Art and Design, Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan)
Ideology, Small Acts of Kindness, and Maternity in Vasily Grossman’s Stalingrad Steven Shankman (University of Oregon)
Thinking of the Future: Jewish Writers at the Crossroads of History Jonathan Brent (The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research)
Session Seven 3:30–5:00
Panel 10 (Guild)
Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, Diderot’s Jacques le fataliste et son maître, and Nabokov’s Pnin: The Comic Novel in Light of Morson’s Wonder Confronts Certainty Robert B. Alter (University of California, Berkeley)
From Literature to Life: An Essayistic Testament to a Friendship Dalya Sachs-Bernstein (The Dalya Estate, Sonoma County, California)
Sentences and Sensibility Robin Feuer Miller (Brandeis University)
Wonder Confronts Prosaics Caryl Emerson (Princeton University)
Hi , is that conference open for everyone?