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This May, Bob Andelman, also known as Mr. Media, has interviewed two of YUP’s experts on graphic fiction and cartoons: Brian Walker on two of his recent books, including Doonesbury and the Art of G.B. Trudeau and Ivan Brunetti for Cartooning: Philosophy and Practice.

And Chicago-based fans of comics and graphic novels are in for a treat: Ivan Brunetti will appear at the 27th annual Chicago Tribune Printers Row Lit Fest, which takes place on Saturday, June 4 and Sunday, June 5, 2011. The Lit Fest is a free, two-day literary extravaganza featuring more than 200 authors, 100 literary programs and 160 booksellers.  

On Sunday, June 5, from 2 pm - 2:45 pm, Brunetti will discuss his new book (and the art of cartooning in general) with two rising young cartoonists who are also based in Chicago: Chris "Elio" Eliopoulos and Onsmith. All three will be available to sign their books afterwards.

And for those outside of Chicago in need of Brunetti’s teaching, once again here is the trailer for Cartooning. Why? Because it is simply one of the coolest things ever.

The May 22 cover of the New York Times Book Review featured a photograph of Harold Bloom; the title of Editor Sam Tanenhaus’s essay: “An Uncommon Reader”, accompanied online by an interview at Bloom’s home in New York. As Tanenhaus writes of the new book, The Anatomy of Influence: Literature as a Way of Life, “[Bloom] still has many arresting things to say and says them, often, with exquisite precision. He is, by any reckoning, one of the most stimulating literary presences of the last half-century.”

At the end of the PEN World Voices Festival earlier this month, Bloom appeared in conversation with Paul Holdengräber, Director of LIVE from the New York Public Library. The discussion centered on the new book and how it responds to Bloom’s 1973 work, The Anxiety of Influence. When colleague John Hollander reviewed Anxiety for the Times, calling it, “more than a little outrageous”, a common reaction to Bloom’s work in the academy at the time, he ultimately conceded that: “In any event, this remarkable book has raised profound questions about where in the mind the creative process is to be located, and about how the prior visions of other poems are, for a true poet, as powerful as his own dreams and as formative as his domestic childhood. From now on, only obtuseness or naiveté, in critic or psychologist, will be able to ignore them.”

The past decades have proved Hollander right, as Bloom moved from Yale’s English Department to found the Humanities Department, an interdisciplinary program of study “designed to contribute to an integrated understanding of the Western cultural tradition”, certainly the relationships and networks of influencing and influenced. Bloom talks with Holdengräber about love, memory, and the power of poetry (and Falstaff :)  ). And he talks about the writers who shaped his reading most—Shakespeare, Whitman, Crane—and what the sound and meaning of their verse have brought to understanding the human experience, how we are all influenced by the art of others. With further reading and a lifelong love for literature, Bloom has now written these reflections into The Anatomy of Influence.  Here’s a video clip from the event, but you can also download the full audio, take it with you, and listen as you go.

Harold Bloom 5.1.11 from LIVE from the NYPL on Vimeo.

And speaking of American icons: The Yankee Clipper has had a great run so far this season, thanks in no small part to Jerome Charyn’s new biography, Joe DiMaggio: The Long Vigil. On Facebook, almost 1,800 fans have gathered this spring for new updates on Joe, his relationship with Marilyn, his status as an American icon, and to share personal stories, music, photos, videos, stats and updates from the treasure troves of info about DiMaggio online.

Don’t miss your chance to hear Charyn speak in person! At noon next Thursday, June 2, he will be at the 92^nd Street Y Tribeca, where he will tell all about DiMaggio and sign copies of his book!

It’s the return of YUP’s Follow Friday!

@bencarp is hanging out with YUP staff at our AHA booth, with tea, coffee, and cookies.

@3PennyMovies gets into the quirky lunar folklore of Bernd Bruner’s Moon.

@ChrisMacDen is anxiously awaiting his copy of The Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade after reading Michelle Alexander’s new book The New Jim Crow.

@mcnallyjackson hosted David Swanson with Mark Crispin Miller, editor of our Icons of America series, for a conversation on Swanson’s War Is a Lie; Michael Takiff to talk about A Complicated Man; and the editors of the Paris Review.

@princetonupress is thinking about happiness this week on their blog, too. What can we say: our authors go together.

Representing Justice from coast to coast: @atrzop at Harvard chatted up Dennis Curtis and @SLSlib_newbooks at Stanford celebrates the new addition to their collection.

@Jason_M_Kelly is talking about his book The Society of Dilettanti: Archaeology and Identity in the British Enlightenment at IUPUI on April 7. Sign up now to reserve space and lunch.

@lynchcartoons ponders why a 3 year old post about Ivan Brunetti’s 1999 article “I Almost Drew Nancy” in Roctober magazine is getting more attention. Could be that people are getting anxious about to bookend Brunetti’s perspective and experience with the soon-to-be published, Cartooning: Practice and Philosophy?

@Joe DiMaggio2011 Check out today’s fun crossword on Joe’s Facebook Page.

@David_Rogers has a free webinar next Thursday, February 24 to discuss the lessons from his book The Network Is Your Customer: Five Strategies to Thrive in a Digital Age.

Hollywood Sign: The famous icon is ever a tweetable mention. @amanduhh417 @Miss_Savory @DJSamSneaker are among the many to pass it today. With the Oscars coming up next weekend, we’re getting ready with Leo Braudy’s The Hollywood Sign: Fantasy and Reality of an American Icon.

@AlisaCosta @kaydora1 @RichardAlbert: February 18, 1688 marked the first formal protest against slavery. Meanwhile, revolution was brewing in England. What a year! (February 18, 1861 was the inauguration of Jefferson Davis as provisional President of the Confederate States of America.)

This afternoon at 4:30pm, Molly Rogers, author of Delia’s Tears: Race, Science, and Photography in 19^th-Century America, will be interviewed by eminent historian David Blight about her book here on Yale’s campus.

The book retells the story of seven South Carolina slaves who were photographed at the request of Swiss naturalist, Louis Agassiz, who sought to use biological evidence to support the theory of separate creations by proving the inferiority of the African race. Rogers writes: “At the heart of this story is the question of what it means to be human….These people, the people depicted in the photographs—Delia, Jack, Renty, Drana, Jem, Alfred, and Fassena—are at the heart of the story described here. The story is about them, and yet at the same time they are strangely absent from it.” Accompanying the historical narrative are short, fictional vignettes about each of the photographs and their subject, recreating slave perspectives that are otherwise lost to us.

The photographs themselves were only uncovered a few decades ago by museum staffers of the Harvard Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. The daguerreotypes were unusual not only because they were of African-Americans, but ones half-clothed, atypical of the white middle-class, nineteenth-century ritual of getting a portrait done with the new exposure process, invented by Louis Daguerre. Once connected to Agassiz, the daguerreotypes uncovered the century-old fascinations with anthropology, ethnography, and race science.

Since the publication of Rogers’ book, a woman in Connecticut, Tamara Lanier, has attempted to prove that her family descends from Renty Taylor, son of Renty in the 1850 photographs, whom her family’s history accounts for as having changed his surname to Thompson when he was sold to a different owner in Alabama. Although photographs are difficult to use as conclusive proof, Lanier insists that the census and genealogical information she has found point to links between her family and Renty. Of the daguerreotype, she says, “How ironic it is to know that the black African chosen by a scientist to be the symbol of ignorance and racial inferiority was truly an educated and self-taught man.” For Black History Month, her “goal is to correct history and to share with all that…Renty was an educated an exceptional person.” Lanier is expected to attend Rogers’ talk this afternoon.

What if this were a Leap Year? Anyone with a birthday on February 29 would tell you that it hangs in there somewhere every year, even without a date on the calendar. Black History Month would have an extra day and Women’s History Month would have to wait. Instead, we’ll let Pearl Primus, dancer extraordinaire, leap across the gap for us. Later this spring, we’ll be publishing The Dance That Claimed Me: A Biography of Pearl Primus, written by Peggy and Murray Schwartz, who were friends and colleagues with access to conduct more than a hundred interviews with family, friends, and fellow artists about Primus. Offering an intimate perspective on her life and exploring her influences on American culture, dance, and education, the Schwartzes trace Primus's path from her childhood in Port of Spain, Trinidad, through her rise as an influential international dancer, an early member of the New Dance Group (whose motto was "Dance is a weapon"), and a pioneer in dance anthropology.

Primus traveled extensively in the United States, Europe, Israel, the Caribbean, and Africa, and she played an important role in presenting authentic African dance to American audiences. She engendered controversy in both her private and professional lives, marrying a white Jewish man during a time of segregation and challenging black intellectuals who opposed the "primitive" in her choreography.  

As part of the 92nd Street Y’s Fridays at Noon program, the Schwartzes will appear on April 29, 2011 to celebrate the publication of their book, and, along with special guests, to honor Pearl Primus with performances of three of her solos. Mark your calendar now for the special occasion.

Carla L. Peterson will be at the Brooklyn Weeksville Heritage Center this Saturday from 1:30-3:30pm to launch her book, Black Gotham: A Family History of African Americans in Nineteenth-Century New York City. Seats are limited, so be sure to RSVP to events@weeksvillesociety.org or call (718) 756-5250. 

Peterson will be giving book talks this spring at various venues in DC and New York. Check here for the full tour schedule.

Before her NBCC win, Clare Cavanagh already had events lined up at the 92^nd Street Y. The first on Sunday, March 20 is a conversation with Edith Grossman titled “Why Translation Matters,” and Grossman’s book of the same name has just been published in paperback from YUP. Both authors are critically-acclaimed translators of the first order; Grossman has often been called one of the most important of our time, particularly for her work on Spanish-English translations of Latin American writers and her hallmark translation of Cervantes’ Don Quixote.

On Monday, March 21, the second event with Cavanagh pertains more directly to the studies of her award-winning book, Lyric Poetry and Modern Politics. In conversation with Robert Hass and Adam Zagajewski, she will discuss the works of Czesław Miłosz for the centenary celebration of the Polish poet’s life. The blog at Little Star, a journal of poetry and prose founded by Ann Kjellberg and Melissa Green, has more information on upcoming events celebrating Miłosz. Be sure to grab tickets to the Y events while they’re still available, and if you’re under 35, purchase them at the amazingly discounted price of $10. These are conversations not to be missed.

No image of prerevolutionary Russian Jewish life is more iconic than the fiddler on the roof. But in the half century before 1917, Jewish musicians were actually descending from their shtetl roofs and streaming in dazzling numbers to Russia’s new classical conservatories. At a time of both rising anti-Semitism and burgeoning Jewish nationalism, how and why did Russian music become the gateway to Jewish modernity in music? Drawing on previously unavailable archives, The Most Musical Nation: Jews and Culture in the Late Russian Empire, by James Loeffler, offers an insightful new perspective on the emergence of Russian Jewish culture and identity.

This Thursday, March 24, Loeffler will be reading excerpts from his book at the YIVO Institute Center for Jewish History. The talk will be complemented by musical examples performed by participants from the Sidney Krum Young Artists Concert Series, with a book signing and reception to follow. Admission is free and open to the public.