KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
(IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE)
Adrian Papahagi
The English Bard and French Theory
Adrian Papahagi is professor of medieval and early modern English literature at the Babeș-Bolyai University of Cluj. He earned his PhD in medieval studies from the Sorbonne, and was a research fellow at the École Française d’Oxford, at New Europe College, Bucharest, and at the Warburg Institute, London. His recent publications on Shakespeare include Providence and Grace: Lectures on Shakespeare’s Problem Plays and Romances, Cluj: Presa Universitară Clujeană, 2020, and nine volumes in the series Shakespeare interpretat de Adrian Papahagi (Iaşi: Polirom, 2020–), which aims to analyse Shakespeare’s complete works.
Christian Mair
Language Spread and Language Competition in the 21st Century: The Digital Factor
Christian Mair obtained his PhD and ‘Habilitation’ at the University of Innsbruck, Austria, and was appointed to a Chair in English Linguistics at the University of Freiburg in Germany in 1990. His research has focussed on the corpus-based description of Modern English grammar and on variability and change in Standard Englishes world-wide. Mair’s current research centres on the role of global English in a multilingual world, on multilingual and nonstandard language practices in computer-mediated communication, and on the sociolinguistics of diaspora and migration, where he is advocating the use of corpora and digital tools to complement existing approaches. He has published several research monographs (e.g. Twentieth-Century English: History, Variation, Standardization, Cambridge University Press, 2006), widely used textbooks and more than 200 chapters and articles. In 2005 he was awarded the degree of Doctor honoris causa by Alexandru Ioan Cuza University.
Wolfgang Hochbruck
Where is the Light? English and North American Studies in Times of Hybrid Wars
*1959, married, with two grown-up children. Student in Freiburg, Halifax N.S., Berkeley, academic positions in Osnabrück, Stuttgart, Braunschweig, and again Freiburg. Currently Professor of North American Philology and Cultural Studies and head of Department of English, Albert Ludwigs University, as well as vice-director, Centre for Security and Society.
Patty Seyburn
Patty Seyburn’s sixth book of poems, Jukebox, is forthcoming from What Books Press in 2025. She previously published five collections of poems: Threshold Delivery (Finishing Line Press, 2019); Perfecta (What Books Press, Glass Table Collective, 2014); Hilarity, (New Issues Press, 2009), Mechanical Cluster (Ohio State University Press, 2002) and Diasporadic (Helicon Nine Editions, 1998). She earned a BS and an MS in Journalism from Northwestern University, an MFA in Poetry from University of California, Irvine, and a Ph.D. in Poetry and Literature from the University of Houston. She is a professor at California State University, Long Beach, and was a 2024 Fulbright Scholar in Iasi, Romania.
Edward Hirsch
Edward Hirsch, a MacArthur Fellow, has published ten books of poems, including Gabriel: A Poem, a book-length elegy for his son, and The Living Fire, which brings together thirty-five years of work. He has also published eight books of prose, among them, How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry, which is translated into Romanian by Dana Bădulescu and Radu Andriescu. His selected poems, Nocturnal Fire, is translated into Romanian by Răzvan Hotăranu, with a preface by Norman Manea. He taught at Wayne State University and the University of Houston. Since 2003, he has been president of the Guggenheim Foundation. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.