9s Politics of Writing Lecture. “How to Make a Revolution: A Guide to Romania’s Fin-de-Siècle Media Spectacle as Performed by a Dying Regime, a Willing Populace, and the International Press Corps.”
Andrei Codrescu, poet, essayist, and novelist. Sponsors: CREES, Avant Garde Interest Group, CES-EUC, Department of English, GLL, International Institute, MFA in Creative Writing Program, and Michigan Public Radio.
About his lecture, Andrei Codrescu writes, “I covered the events in Romania in 1989-1990 for NPR and ABC News, and I documented the return to my native country in The Hole in the Flag: an Exile's Story of Return & Revolution (Morrow 1991, Avon 1992). I have returned numerous times since and I started writing in Romanian again, picking up the thread severed at age 19 in 1965. Now, twenty years after the coup, or “revolution” that ended in the execution of Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu, Romania is a different country, a member of the European Union, and an ardent convert to capitalism. My talk will focus on reality and appearances in Romania, and the role of the media, of which I am a part, in shaping the images of the “revolution” and those of the new Romania.”
Andrei Codrescu’s career spans four decades as novelist, poet, journalist, filmmaker, commentator, and educator. His work has been distinguished with numerous awards, including the Peabody Award and the Pushcart Prize. He was MacCurdy Distinguished Professor of English at Louisiana State University from 1984 until 2009, and continues to edit Exquisite Corpse: A Journal of Life and Letters, an online journal he founded at LSU in 1983. His most recent book is The Posthuman Dada Guide: tzara and lenin play chess (Princeton 2009).
“The Nines: Brinks, Cusps, and Perceptions of Possibility—from 1789–2009”
In Fall 2009, the Weiser Center for Europe and Eurasia, along with other partnering units at the University of Michigan, will present programs exploring the relationship between world-historic events and the alternative futures they inspired. From the explosion of alternatives in 1919 to the normalization of democratic destinies in 1989, from the crisis of 1929 to the anxieties of 2009, this series will delve into the many iconic “nines” of the modern era.
