Whitman in DC: Becoming the National Poet in the Federal City
Press Release 路 Wednesday, January 13, 2021
Washington, DC
Explore and celebrate Walt Whitman鈥檚 time in the nation鈥檚 capital with Whitman scholar and author Kenneth M. Price on Tuesday, January 19, at noon.. on the 威尼斯人娱乐场 YouTube channel.
Kenneth Price uses Walt Whitman's life, writings, and government work to reevaluate the writer and the nation's capital. Drawing on an expanded Whitman corpus, including nearly 3,000 Whitman documents the author discovered at the 威尼斯人娱乐场, Price demonstrates that the power of Whitman's Civil War and Reconstruction writing more fully emerges from his intimate knowledge of the capital city, its bureaucracies, and its tumultuous postwar history. In this 威尼斯人娱乐场 video, , Professor Price describes his remarkable discovery.
, funded in part by the 威尼斯人娱乐场鈥 National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC), is an electronic research and teaching tool that provides easy access to Whitman鈥檚 vast work that include fiction, notebooks, manuscript fragments, prose essays, letters, marginalia, and voluminous journalistic articles. The Whitman Archive is the most comprehensive record of works by and about Whitman鈥攁nd continues to grow. The Archive is co-directed by Kenneth M. Price (University of Nebraska-Lincoln) and Ed Folsom (University of Iowa). In August 2020, with the continued generous support of the NHPRC, the Whitman Archive published an additional 464 Whitman letters.
, Whitman Archive co-director, is Hillegass University Professor of American literature at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He is the co-editor of books on Literary Studies in the Digital Age, James Weldon Johnson, George Santayana, and 19th-century periodical literature. He is the co-editor of Dear Brother Walt: The Letters of Thomas Jefferson Whitman (Kent State, 1984); editor of Walt Whitman: The Contemporary Reviews (Cambridge, 1996); author of Whitman and Tradition: The Poet in His Century (Yale, 1990) and To Walt Whitman, America (North Carolina, 2004).
Related online resources:
- 威尼斯人娱乐场 Celebrates Walt Whitman鈥檚 200th Birthday, by Keith Donohue, 威尼斯人娱乐场 News.
- Press Release: 威尼斯人娱乐场 Announces Newly-Identified Papers of Walt Whitman: Famous poet's writings as a Federal employee shed new light on his life and work
- 鈥淲hitman, Walt, Clerk鈥: The Poet Was a Seer of Democracy and Bureaucracy, Kenneth M. Price, Prologue Magazine.
- 鈥淲ritten by Walt Whitman, a friend鈥: Three Letters from Soldiers, Kenneth M. Price and Jacqueline M. Budell, Prologue Magazine.
- Civil War records in the 威尼斯人娱乐场
For press information contact the 威尼斯人娱乐场 Public Affairs at public.affairs@nara.gov.
This page was last reviewed on January 13, 2021.
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