In Boston, in the aftermath of the Civil War, Verena Tarrant (Madeleine Potter), a gifted young orator, has attracted the attention of Olive Chancellor (Vanessa Redgrave), who wishes to nurture Verena as an inspirational force for the Women’s Movement. Ranged against her is Basil Ransom (Christopher Reeve), a handsome male chauvinist, who wants Verena as his wife. Against a backdrop of luminous New England landscapes, battle is joined, and for Olive, the struggle will prove an odyssey that forces her to acknowledge her true nature. Merchant Ivory Productions’ acclaimed screen adaptation of Henry James’s The Bostonians (1886), set in Cambridge and Boston, charts the struggle between two charismatic forces to gain control over the destiny of a spirited young woman.
Join us for a special screening of The Bostonians, now in stunning 4K restoration, with an opening discussion of both the film and the novel led by Sierra Eckert and David Kurnick and moderated by John Plotz. This screening opens the Brandeis Novel Symposium set for Friday, October 17, a free event drawing scholars from across the country that audience members are encouraged to attend.
THE BRANDEIS NOVEL SYMPOSIUM is a one-day conference that chooses a single novel as a point of focus for salient theoretical, historical, political, and narratological questions about the novel as a genre. This year’s symposium on Henry James’s The Bostonians will be held on Friday, October 17, in Brandeis University’s Women’s Studies Research Center, and speakers will include Louis Menand (Harvard University) and Holly Jackson (University of Massachusetts, Boston).
SIERRA ECKERT is Assistant Professor of English at Wesleyan University. She specializes in nineteenth-century British and Anglophone literature, disciplinary history, critical and social theory, and the digital humanities. Her work has appeared in Victorian Studies and Studies in the Novel.
DAVID KURNICK is Professor of English at Rutgers University at New Brunswick. He is the author of The Savage Detectives Reread and Empty Houses: Theatrical Failure and the Novel, and his writing has appeared in Bookforum, Public Books, and Chronicle of Higher Education.
JOHN PLOTZ is Mandel Professor of Humanities at Brandeis University. He co-hosts two podcasts: Novel Dialogue and Recall This Book, and oversees the annual Brandeis Novel Symposium.
Registered attendees of the Brandeis Novel Symposium are entitled to a ticket discount. To receive the discount, tickets must be purchased ONLINE with code. To receive your code, register for the Brandeis Novel Symposium for free at the following link:
www.brandeis.edu/english/events/brandeis-novel-symposium/
