Poet, essayist, novelist and commentator Andrei Codrescu will address the topic of communist Romania’s collapse and what followed in a public lecture titled “How to Make a Revolution: A Guide to Romania’s Fin-de-Siecle Media Spectacle as Performed by a Dying Regime, a Willing Populace and the International Press Corps.”
It is presented at 7 p.m. Dec. 9 at Rackham Auditorium.
Codrescu’s career spans four decades. His work has won awards including the Peabody Award and the Pushcart Prize. He was MacCurdy Distinguished Professor of English at Louisiana State University from 1984-2009, and continues to edit “Exquisite Corpse: A Journal of Life and Letters,” an online journal he founded at LSU in 1983. His most recent book is “The Posthuman Dada Guide: Tzara and Lenin Play Chess” (Princeton 2009).
“I covered the events in Romania in 1989-1990 for NPR and ABC News, and I documented the return to my native country in ‘The Hole in the Flag: an Exile’s Story of Return & Revolution,’ ” Codrescu says. “I have returned numerous times since and I started writing in Romanian again, picking up the thread severed at age 19 in 1965. The talk will focus on reality and appearances in Romania, the role of the media in shaping the images of the revolution and the new Romania.”
Codrescu will speak for 45 minutes, then take questions. He will be introduced by Andrei Markovits, Arthur F. Thurnau Professor and Karl W. Deutsch Collegiate Professor of Comparative Politics and German Studies.
The lecture is sponsored by the Center for Russian and East European Studies, Avant Garde Interest Group, Center for European Studies-European Union Center, Department of English, Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, International Institute, MFA in Creative Writing Program, and Michigan Public Radio. Codrescu’s visit also is a sponsored project in the Weiser Center for Europe and Eurasia’s fall series, “The Nines: Brinks, Cusps, and Perceptions of Possibility from 1789-2009.”
The lecture is among several programs and performances presented by the Weiser Center for Europe and Eurasia in the “Focus: Romania” series, co-sponsored in part by the American Romanian Festival.
For more information go to www.ii.umich.edu/wcee.
