Greg Barnhisel at NYU MACC: "The Last Puritan: Norman Holmes Pearson in the American Century"

Please join NYU's Modern and Contemporary Colloquium as we host Greg Barnhisel on Friday, October 18th, 5:00pm to discuss his latest book, Code Name Puritan: Norman Holmes Pearson at the Nexus of Poetry, Espionage, and American Power.

Where: English Department Event Space (ground floor), 244 Greene St., New York City

When: Friday, October 18th, 2024, 5:00pm

Registration required! Register by signing up for tickets here on Eventbrite or by emailing Richard Aldersley (rpa273 AT nyu DOT edu).

Norman Holmes Pearson’s life embodied the Cold War alliance among US artists, scholars, and the national-security state that coalesced after World War II. As a Yale professor and editor, he helped create the field of American Studies and shaped the public’s understanding of literary modernism—significantly, the work of women poets such as Hilda Doolittle and Gertrude Stein. At the same time, as a high-ranking spy, recruiter, and cultural diplomat, he connected the academy, the State Department, and even the CIA. For Pearson, this seemingly unlikely combination of the avant-garde and the patriotic was entirely in keeping with his “Vital Center” understanding of American civilization. In this talk, Greg Barnhisel will give an overview of Pearson’s unique career as scholar, literary fixer, secret agent, and cultural diplomat, focusing on Pearson’s hidden role in shaping a new understanding of America in the 1950s.

Greg Barnhisel is Professor of English at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, PA. He is the author of JAMES LAUGHLIN, NEW DIRECTIONS, AND THE REMAKING OF EZRA POUND (2005), COLD WAR MODERNISTS: ART, LITERATURE, AND AMERICAN CULTURAL DIPLOMACY (2015), and CODE NAME PURITAN: NORMAN HOLMES PEARSON AT THE NEXUS OF POETRY, ESPIONAGE, AND AMERICAN POWER (2024) and editor, since 2014, of the scholarly journal BOOK HISTORY.

Host or Publisher Richard Aldersley (NYU)