The Werner Sollors Reader: Ethnicity, Cosmopolitanism and Particularism, is the first comprehensive overview of Werner Sollors’ ground-breaking work on culture and ethnicity. Ranging from the Bible and classical sources to Mary Antin, Hemingway, and Teju Cole, the essays trace the modern origins of such terms as identity or cultural pluralism that we use to imagine human difference. Daniel G. Williams’ introduction to the Reader foregrounds some of the key emphases and contributions of Sollors’ writings and the conversation, moderated by John Stauffer, explores the trajectory of his work from African American studies and American literature and culture to multilingualism, interracialism, and the cultural history of post-war Germany.
A wine and cheese reception will follow the evening's conversation.
Read the recent Harvard Magazine feature about Sollors' work here: "A More Generous, Capacious America"
This event is co-sponsored in collaboration with the Mahindra Humanities Center and the Department of Celtic Languages and Literatures.
Werner Sollors is Henry B. and Anne M. Cabot Professor of English Literature and Professor of African and African American Studies at Harvard University. He served as chair of Afro-American Studies from 1984 through 1987 and from 1988 through 1990, of American Civilization from 1997-2002, and of Ethnic Studies from 2001 through 2004 and in academic year 2009-10. Sollors is a central figure in the field of ethnic studies and The Werner Sollors Reader (Edinburgh UP 2025), edited by Daniel G. Williams, is the first volume to offer a full overview of his work. Raised in the Frankfurt area and educated in Berlin he has spent most of his career at Harvard University and is regarded, in Cornel West’s words, ‘as one of the finest scholars that we have on race and cultural hybridity in both this country and the world’. He is described by Eric Lott as one of the founders of a ‘New Cosmopolitanism’ that is ‘wary of appeals to authenticity as regressive, and insistent on the fact that contemporary collective identities often overlap’. While Sollors has been an undoubted influence on critics such as David Hollinger, Walter Benn Michaels and K. Anthony Appiah, his deep historical sensibilities and consistent awareness of both the costs, and opportunities, of assimilation lead to his questioning attitude towards celebratory accounts of cosmopolitanism.
Daniel G. Williams is Personal Chair of English Literature at Swansea University. He is a cultural critic and one of Wales’ leading public intellectuals. His research interests range from the 19th century to the present day and encompass Welsh language and English language literatures on both sides of the Atlantic. These interests are linked by a concern with questions of nationalism, ethnicity and identity.
John Stauffer is Sumner R. and Marshall S. Kates Professor of English and of African and African American Studies and Interim Chair of the Department of English at Harvard University. He is the author or editor of 20 books and over 100 articles, which mostly focus on antislavery, social protest, or photography.
Catherine McKenna is Margaret Brooks Robinson Professor of Celtic Languages and Literatures. Her research focuses on the narrative prose and bardic poetry of medieval Wales, particularly the literature of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and on medieval saints’ cults and hagiography, particularly that of Saint Brigit.
LOCATION:Thompson Room, Barker Center STATUS:CONFIRMED DTSTART:20250311T220000Z DTEND:20250311T233000Z END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR