As its yearlong look at the theme of “Revolution!” continues, the Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities at Case Western Reserve University examines the role that literature and art—and especially photography—play in social change.
In “Revolutionaries: Race, Class and Culture between the Wars,” Walter Benn Michaels, an American literary theorist from the University of Illinois at Chicago, will compare the works of German photographer August Sanders and American photographer Walker Evans, who captured an evolving society in America and Europe between WWI and WWII. He also will examine social changes portrayed in William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom.
Michaels, author of Our America: Nativism, Modernism and Pluralism and The Shape of the Signifier: 1967 to the End of History, will draw on his new research project, “The Beauty of a Social Problem,” which examines art and inequalities between the world wars.
The free, public event will take place March 4 at 4:30 p.m. in the Wolstein Research Building auditorium. To register, contact Magge Kaminski at the Baker-Nord Center at 216.368.2242, humanities@case.edu or visit humanities.case.edu.