In honor of the publication of A Whole World: Letters from James Merrill, edited by Langdon Hammer and Stephen Yenser, Meghan O’Rourke will have a discussion with Dan Chiasson, Shane McCrae, Maureen N. McLane, Srikanth Reddy, and Roger Reeves about the influence of James Merrill’s legacy: his dazzlingly witty letters, his cosmic vision, and his poetry’s trajectory. 
Sponsored by The Yale Review, English Department’s Theory and Media Studies Colloquium, and Whitney Humanities Center

May 18 marks the 40th anniversary of the first notice in the New York Native in 1981 of what is known as AIDS. Bill Goldstein, authorized biographer of the late Larry Kramer, will discuss the playwright and activist, whose papers are in the Beinecke Library. Goldstein spent hundreds of hours interviewing Kramer and has worked in Kramer’s personal papers, as well as in the records of the Gay Men’s Health Crisis and ACT UP, the two organizations Kramer played a vital role in founding. He has also studied the personal archives of many of Kramer’s closest friends and opponents.

A conversation with Donald Nicholson-Smith.
Zoom Webinar Registration: https://bit.ly/3dL3qCB
Literary translator, former activist with the Situationist International in Paris, and one of the founders of King Mob, Donald will discuss his engagement with critical agit-prop in the London action group, its many political, literary, and artistic antecedents, and its strong affinities with contemporaneous activists, such as the Black militants of Notting Hill Gate.

Ajay Sinha will discuss the Indian dancer Ram Gopal in the photographs of the Carl Van Vechten archives.
Zoom webinar registration: https://bit.ly/3u2PB94

Zoom webinar registration: https://bit.ly/39ejUlf