Events

Public-Facing Speaking Engagements and Media Appearances

Jack Kerouac, French Novelist?, University of Pennsylvania, March 12, 2024.

“Le long chemin de Jack Kerouac: du Québec au Continent”, Espace Kerouac, Saint-Hubert-de-Rivière-du-Loup, 21 novembre, 2023.

“Humming in the vacancy,” PoemTalk #189, on Gregory Corso’s “Vision of Rotterdam", with Rita Barnard and M.C. Kinniburgh. Kelly Writers House, October 26, 2023.

“It’s on the Illabus",” NOVEL DIALOGUE podcast, 5.3: Talking comics with the great John Jennings. May 4, 2023.

Winter Reading Project, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever Discussion Panel, Penn English, November 30, 2022.

LOA Live, “THE UNKNOWN KEROUAC”, a Kerouac Centenary Conversation, featuring readings by Bill Heck. Library of America, November 15, 2022.

“The Man the Other Side: Jack Kerouac, Bilingualism, & Self-Translation.” Moses Greeley Parker Lecture, Lowell Celebrates Kerouac, October 2022.

“A Conversation with Adrian Tomine,” a Bernheimer Symposium, at the Kelly Writers House, September 28, 2022.

“Tribute to Jack Kerouac: 100 Years Still Alive,” Webinar, Centre de la francophonie des Amériques, March, 2022. Co-panelist with Herménégilde Chiasson and Susan Pinette. [French-English]

CITY LIGHTS LIVE! “Still Outside: Kerouac@100,” a City Lights Bookstore event, March 10, 2022.

“Sur les Traces de Kerouac,” Le Téléjournal, Radio-Canada Arts, Radio Canada, Mars 2022. [in French]

“Pourquoi lire Jack Kerouac?” Plus on est de fous plus on lit, Radio-Canada, 8 mars 2022. [in French].

Radio podcast, “Claude McKay, aux racines de la Harlem Renaissance,” avec Manou Farine, Poésie et Ainsi de Suite, France Culture, Octobre 2021. [in French]

Penn 60-Second Lectures, “Comics’ Lessons for Pandemic Living,” Penn Arts & Sciences, April 2021

“Shadow Archives,” in conversation with Anita Patterson. The Hutchins Center, W. E. B. Du Bois Research Institute Alumni Fellows Virtual Reading Series, Harvard University, October 2020.

“On the Road,” LITERATE podcast, Episode 3, September 2020.

“Kerouac on Auction: Gothic Book Mart and the Mysteries of The Haunted Life Manuscript,” Modernism – Materiality – Meaning, Kislak Conference, March 2, 2019.

• “Our Endless Ear,” PoemTalk # 124 on Jack Kerouac’s Old Angel Midnight, with Clark Coolidge and Michelle Taransky. Kelly Writers House, May 15, 2018

“Our Endless Ear,” PoemTalk # 124 on Jack Kerouac’s Old Angel Midnight, with Clark Coolidge and Michelle Taransky. Kelly Writers House, May 15, 2018

A Conversation with Ammiel Alcalay on The Lost & Found Initiative, Kelly Writers House, Presented by the Applebaum Editors and Publishers Series, October 31, 2018.

“Claude McKay’s Archival Rebirth: Provenance and Politics in Amiable with Big Teeth”, Hutchins Center, Harvard University, March 8, 2017.

“I never had a language of my own”: Jack Kerouac and the Making of a “Big American Writer,” University of Florida, March 7, 2024

“Between the Lines: Amiable with Big Teeth by Claude McKay: A Roundtable Discussion,” with Brent Hayes Edwards, Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts, and Dagwami Woubshet. The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, June 20, 2017.

“Les écrits en français oubliés de Jack Kerouac,” avec Marie-Louise Arseneault, Plus on est de fous, plus on it!, Radio-Canada, April 5, 2016. [in French]

A conversation with Department of English Graduates, Concordia University, Montréal, November 16, 2023

Other Events

  • Radio, “Une table ronde en hommage à Jack Kerouac,” Le 15-18, Radio-Canada, March 2022.

  • “The Hidden Hand: How Translators Bring Great Literature to Life,” Senior Services, Free Library of Philadelphia, December 2021.

  • Friday Forum, Harvard Book Store, “Shadow Archives,” in conversation with Jesse McCarthy, September 6, 2019.

  • “The Photographic Collaborations of Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, and Gordon Parks.” Chicago Humanities Festival, Nov. 11th 2018.

  • Book event, “112th: Jean-Christophe Cloutier and Brent Hayes Edwards on Claude McKay,” Book Culture bookstore, February 16, 2017.

  • TV, TV5Monde, “Kerouac, La vie est d’hommage,” 300 Millions de Critiques, May 14, 2016

    “Picking Brains with Scott McCloud”. Rutgers University-Camden, April 8, 2015.

  • Interview with Paul Levitz (former DC Comics President) and Rob Berry, Wexler Studio, Kelly Writers House, University of Pennsylvania, March 30, 2015

  • “Make the Most of your Visit to the Archives.” New Digital Scholarship Worshops@Penn Libraries, October 30th, 2014.

  • Roundtable Contributor for “A Night for Cartoonists,” Live at Writers House, Radio Program Recording, Oct. 27th, 2014. Kelly Writers House, Philadelphia, PA

Invited Academic Talks (selected)

  • “‘Not My Own Language’: The Agonies of Self-Translation in Kerouac,” MLA annual convention, Philadelphia, January 2024.

  • “The Therapeutics of Self-Translation,” Littérature américaine et cultures thérapeutiques, Université Grenoble-Alpes, June 2023.

  • “Kerouac: Foreigner in America, American Abroad.” The Jack Kerouac Centenary Conference, Harper College, November 2022.

  • “Prelude to the Scroll: The Bilingual Labors of Jean-Louis “Jack” Kerouac,” Dylan and the Beats symposium, Institute for Bob Dylan Studies, Tulsa, OK, June 2022.

  • « Une douzaine romans impossibles, a moitier fini » : The French Manuscripts of Jack Kerouac,” Imperfect Itineraries: Literature and Literary Research in the Archives, Journée d’études Internationale IDEA, Université de Lorraine, March 2022.

  • “New Directions: Black Print Cultures and Archives, Part 2,” History of the Book, Mahindra Humanities Center, Harvard University, February, 2022. Co-panelist with Elizabeth McHenry, Jarvis Givens, and Tara Bynum.

  • “Multilingual Kerouac: Self-Translation as Textual (Re)Construction,” MLA Annual Convention, Washington DC, January 2022.

  • “ ‘Translated from the French’: Jack Kerouac, the Archive, and the Continenting of America,” Canadian-American Center, University of Maine, March 29, 2021.

  • “New Work in Modernist Studies,” MSA Roundtable with authors shortlisted for the MSA First Book Prize, October 2020.

  • “First Books: Shadow Archives,” in conversation with Farah Griffin and Elleza Kelley, Columbia U, February 25, 2020.

  • Book Talk with UVA Special Collections Team. Teleconference with University of Virginia, February 25, 2020.

  • “The Proleptic Archive,” MLA Annual Convention, Seattle, January 2020.

  • “A Rage of Privacy: Ann Petry and the Ethics of Manuscript Donations,” Modernist Studies Association (MSA) Annual Conference, Toronto, October 2019.

  • “The Neatest Records You Ever Saw: Jack Kerouac’s Collecting Practices.” Collection Thinking conference, Montréal, June 2018.

  • “Claude McKay and the Paradoxes of the Archive,” University of Oregon, April 26th, 2018.

  • “Introducing Jean-Louis Kérouac: ‘Loome laute bord—The Man on the Other Side,” Redefining Self-Translation, MLA Annual Convention, January 6, 2018.

  • “A Harlem Clinic Photographic Archive, 1946-1964: Richard Wright, Richard Saunders, Gordon Parks, Ralph Ellison, Roy DeCarava,” Hutchins Center Colloquium, Harvard U, November 15, 2017.

  • “Kerouac du français à l’anglais,” European Beat Studies Network, Paris, September 21, 2017.

  • “New Directions in Book History,” Harvard Book History, Mahindra Humanities Center, September 18, 2017.

  • “Delayed Modernism: Claude McKay, Archives, and Posthumous Publication,” Modernist Studies Association (MSA) 19, August 12, 2017.

  • “So Many Books, So Little Time,” The Virginia Nixon Memorial Lecture, Concordia University, March 16th, 2017.

  • “Kerouac in Translation, Kerouac in Diaspora,” Forum on Translation, Penn Humanities Forum, November 16, 2016.

  • “Harlem is Now Here: Locating the Lost Photographs of Ralph Ellison and Gordon Parks.” The Center for Jazz Studies at Columbia University, March 31, 2016.

  • “Reconstructing French Kerouac: One Holograph Notebook at a Time,” Workshop in the History of Material Text, University of Pennsylvania, Nov. 23rd, 2015.

  • “Race, Ethnicity, and the American Hipster,” Lowell Celebrates Kerouac, Oct. 8-11, 2015.

  • “Locating Position ‘Here’.” Locating Post-45, University of Pennsylvania, March 19, 2015.

  • “McKay After Morocco: Lost & Found in the Archives.” Bard College, February 26th, 2015.

  • “‘You cant smoke even in the toilet in the Bibliotheque Nationale’: The Private vs. Institutional Archive in Jack Kerouac’s Satori In Paris.” Modernist Studies Association (MSA), November 2014.

  • Winter Reading Project 2013-2014: Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad. Discussion panel with Jennifer Egan, Kathy Van Cleve, and Jean-Christophe Cloutier. University of Pennsylvania, January 23, 2014.

  • “An Amiable Discovery: The Authentication of Claude McKay’s Long Lost Novel.” The Buckner Lecture, University of North Carolina Wilmington. September 2013.

  • “Bridging Two Worlds: Claude McKay, Samuel Roth, and the Shadow Archive of Modernism.” Beyond the Text:  Literary Archives in the 21st Century Symposium, Yale, April 2013.