The Critic and Her Publics
The critic and her publics are difficult concepts to define. The critic is not a creative writer, an academic, a journalist, or a reporter, yet criticism may borrow from the protocols of all four professions. The critic's publics are not made up exclusively of scholars, specialists, artists, or lay readers, but span these divisions. How does a critic address her audiences? What is her reading and writing practice like? What does she imagine as the function of criticism at the present time? Most important of all: How does she actually “do” criticism? The inaugural Shapiro Speaker series, “The Critic and Her Publics,” will explore these questions through a series of interviews between Merve Emre, Professor and Director of the Shapiro Center, and critics for The New Yorker, The New York Times, New York Magazine, New York Review of Books, London Review of Books, Harper’s, The Yale Review, n+1, and other publications. All events are free and open to the public.
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Christine Smallwood
Christine Smallwood is the author of the novel The Life of the Mind (Hogarth, 2021), which Time magazine named one of the top ten fiction books of the year. Her essays, reviews, and profiles have been published in Harper’s, The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, Bookforum, and The New York Times Magazine, where she is a contributing writer. She holds a PhD in English from Columbia University and is a core faculty member of the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research, where she teaches courses on the nineteenth-century novel and other topics. In March 2024, she will publish La Captive, a book in the Fireflies Press “Decadent Editions” series.
Schedule
04/16/2024: Christine Smallwood