Event details

During the 1930s, Americans began to imagine what a homegrown fascism might look like. Drawing widely on the fiction and film of the period, this lecture will concentrate on Sinclair Lewis’s 1935 novel It Can’t Happen Here, in which a mild-mannered journalist comes to realise that there has never been ‘a people so ripe for dictatorship as ours’.  Little read for many years, Lewis’s novel has recently come to seem relevant again, as the book that predicted Trump.

This event is free and open to all, but registration is required - please sign up via this link.

This public lecture will be preceded by a mini-symposium in honour of Professor Kasia Boddy and the varied themes of her major works, including Blooming Flowers: A Seasonal History of Plants and People (Yale University Press, 2020); Geranium (Reaktion Books, 2013); The American Short Story Since 1950 (Edinburgh University Press, 2010); and Boxing: A Cultural History (Reaktion Books, 2008).

Plants, Poetry, and Punchy Prose: A mini-symposium in honour of Kasia Boddy
Wednesday 8 May, 4.15pm-6.15pm, Bowland Auditorium

Contributions include poetry, papers, and more from: 

• Janine Bradbury - What Women Wrestle With: Notes on Joanie Laurer 
• Sam Reese - Only Anecdotal? The Story of the Short Story
• Becca Drake - Tree/Flower Poetry 
• Bryony Aitchison - Orchids and Fritillaries: Queer Desire in the English Gardens of Vita Sackville-West
• Lucy Foster - Mexican Mangroves 
• Tom Houlton - Petals/Queer: Cruising in the Garden 
• Anthony V Capildeo - BECOMING CREATURE

This event is free and open to all, but registration is required - please sign up via this link.

Contacts: natasha.tanna@york.ac.uk and alexandra.kingston-reese@york.ac.uk