LLC30: Culture and Democracy in Nineteenth-Century New York

Collaborative Goals

Our goal was to organize a larger event -- a keynote speaker (Britt Rusert) followed by graduate student papers on "Collectivity." We had a wonderful two day event which made a large difference for graduate students. We also organized an archive section at Kroch library which we had to keep small -- but the students and faculty were completely engaged. These events took place over September 29-30, 2023 and were well attended.

In Memoriam

We are very sorry to announce the passing of one of our initial group organizers, Ezra Tawil, a Professor at the University of Rochester. Ezra has been an important part of our group from the beginning. His research on nineteenth-century contexts and crises has been inspirational for many of us. Books such as The Making of Racial Sentiment: Slavery and the Birth of the Frontier Romance (Cambridge University Press, 2006) have established key terms for nineteenth-century studies. We have attached a tribute from a graduate student at the University of Rochester, Seth Murray.

Ezra Tawil was the finest teacher I had in graduate school. In the classroom he could field a conversation like no other. He had a unique gift for making every student feel as if their contributions were interesting, urgent, and fresh. He was excited and filled with joy, week in and week out, that we were all there to read and talk about books with him. During the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, he and I were undertaking an independent study on the early American novel. Each week, logging in to Zoom to see him there, smiling and laughing in the midst of so much chaos, remains one of the few bright spots of life from that difficult period. That odd virtual space was the crystallized form of what he could do as a teacher: turn the classroom into a kind of asylum from the world, not where it might be escaped but instead where it became more bearable, more livable.

As a scholar, he was a particularly graceful writer. He had a knack for managing a style that was both conversational and clear, while also not sacrificing any intellectual rigor. He was both generous and incisive in his work – and above all, curious. While specializing in the early American period, his work spoke just as intelligently about a vast range of topics, including Renaissance rhetoricians, Borges, and James Baldwin. At the time of his death, he was hard at work on a project about Judaism, religious violence, and Clarel – the culmination of a lifetime spent passionately reading Melville.

May his memory be a blessing.