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Watch Colette Brooks in Conversation with Jennifer Egan

On January 17, 2022, Greenlight Bookstore hosted a virtual book launch for Colette Brooks’ Trapped in the Present Tense: Meditations on American Memory. Jennifer...   Read More

Essay by Rich Blint for the 1981-2021 P.P.O.W. exhibition

Rich Blint’s catalogue essay, entitled 1981-2021, for the P.P.O.W. gallery exhibition highlights the life and work of Martin Wong and Aaron Gilbert. Sparking an...   Read More

Watch the 2021 Literature Faculty Salon Reading

Thanks to everyone who was able to attend our 2021 Literature Faculty Salon! Those who were unable to attend the live event can now...   Read More

2021 Akilah Oliver Award and Robert Robin Mookerjee Award

Remembering Akilah Oliver Akilah Oliver (1961-2011) was a prominent poet/performer in the avant-garde literary scene. Her first book of poetry was published by the...   Read More

PEN America’s DREAMing Out Loud tuition-free creative writing program

Spring 2021 applications are open for PEN America’s DREAMing Out Loud, a paid, tuition-free writing program for young, aspiring immigrant writers, especially those who are undocumented....   Read More

Published on NYT: Elizabeth Kendall’s “New York City’s Gift of Motion: A 1970s Tale”

Lang’s very own Elizabeth Kendall, Associate Professor of Liberal Studies and Literary Studies, has been published on The New York Times! Her piece, titled...   Read More

Remembering Ann

Ann Snitow May 9, 1943-August 10, 2019 Ann Snitow, a founding faculty member of Lang College and the creator of the Gender Studies Program at...   Read More

Lang poetry event

You’re invited to a Lang Poetry event in DUMBO Friday, May 5th at 5pm! Let’s celebrate the almost end of the semester and hang...   Read More

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On January 17, 2022, Greenlight Bookstore hosted a virtual book launch for Colette Brooks’ Trapped in the Present Tense: Meditations on American Memory. Jennifer Egan (Manhattan Beach, A Visit from the Goon Squad) joined Brooks for a singular discussion on memory writ large.

In Trapped in the Present Tense, Emeritus Professor of Literary Studies Colette Brooks (In the City, Lost in Wonder) explores the mechanics and malleability of the collective American memory. Revisiting some of the more forgotten aspects of recent events in the American story to explain our challenging and often puzzling present—including televised assassinations, the Doomsday Clock, and obsessive diarists—Brooks refreshes the American narrative in a lyrical and inventive blend of history, memoir, and visual essay that “ruminates upon the past while reframing…our present perceptions of what matters most” (Booklist).

Watch the video below or on YouTube.