Catching up with our Faculty: Kamran Javadizadeh Edition
This past summer, many of our faculty traveled and gave talks all around the world. We’ll be featuring a few of them in the coming weeks—this time, we’ll be focusing on Dr. Kamran Javadizadeh, who traveled to the UK and spoke about poetry in Oxford and Cambridge. Professor Javadizadeh was invited to give a lecture on June 5th at the American Literature Research Seminar in Oxford, and he presented on ‘The National Poetry Crisis.’ Dr. Javadizadeh drew from the conclusion to his forthcoming book for his talk, which centered on a poetry festival which had been organized at the Library of Congress in the fall of 1962, and which happened to coincide with the Cuban Missile Crisis. “After the first day of the conference,” explained Dr. Javadizadeh, “President Kennedy came on television and announced that there were these missiles in Cuba. The Poetry Festival was happening in the Library of Congress, which is right next to the capitol building itself.” The festival’s setting, and its status...