Alan Wald has published a thoughtful & generous review of my book 1960 in the journal The Global Sixties. Here are the opening sentences: With a thrilling indifference to more conventional approaches, University of Pennsylvania literary scholar Al Filreis adds a welcome and bracingly original dimension to our understanding of...
This nice “Choice” review is being published in the September 2022 issue. Here is a sneak preview:
A review of my book 1960 has been published in Leonardo — by Jan Baetens. It’s insightful and detailed and — I’m happy to say — really gets what I’m trying to do in this study of a turning-point year. HERE‘s the link to the review.
I’ve been reading U.S. newspaper coverage during the year 1960 of the so-called “German economic miracle”—recovery led by huge American investments & made possible by political “rehabiliation.” Most news articles are glowing. Everyone is happy. This one covers the 20% of Germans who are unhappy about the prosperity, or not...
This bronze-and-glass sculpture by Jasper Johns is part of a series of flashlights. This one—dated 1960—is on display at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
I am writing about Timothy Leary’s book, High Priest (1960). As I read the book today I noticed that the publisher of the paperback edition I own offered a seemingly tolerant but defensively insistent disclaimer. Here it is:
Late 1959. Science Digest summarizes a psychological study done on “beatniks” in San Francisco. It’s another way in which dissent gets pathologized at a time like that (late ’50s—a time of post-McCarthy thaw, a time in which a variety of heretical political positions could be once again taken). Here’s the...
This drawing illustrates an article published in a 1960 issue of the New York Times about the republication that year of Mein Kamp and the spate just then of books about the Nazis. What’s a bookstore shopper to do? [Click on the image for a larger view.]
Thanks to George Drury and Lois Baum, PennSound has recently added a stunningly good cache of audio recordings from the “Word of Mouth” series, originally aired on WFMT at Loyola University, Chicago. Among these recordings is a conversation among Langston Hughes, John Sellers, James Cotton and Otis Spann, moderated by...
Jasper Johns, Painting with Two Balls (1960). Encaustic and collage on canvas with object. I saw this at the Philadelphia Museum of Art when the painting was on loan from the artist’s collection.
Al Filreis is Kelly Professor, Faculty Director of the Kelly Writers House, Director of the Center
for Programs in Contemporary Writing, Co-Director of PennSound, and Publisher of Jacket2—all at the University of Pennsylvania. Among his books are Secretaries of the Moon,
Wallace Stevens & the Actual World, Modernism from Left to Right, and Counter-Revolution of the Word: The Conservative Attack on Modern Poetry, 1945-60. His new book is 1960: When Art & Literature Confronted the Memory of World War II & Remade the Modern (Columbia University Press, 2021). He is currently writing a book about online pedagogy. He has taught a massive open online course, "ModPo," to 265,000 participants in 192 countries since 2012.
Founder/Faculty Director, Kelly Writers House—intro video ][ events calendar
Convener/teacher, “ModPo.” an open online course on modern & contemporary U.S. poetry—overview of the course ][ intro video
Publisher of Jacket2 magazine—my Jacket2 commentary series ][ "First Readings"
Producer/host, PoemTalk podcast series—co-sponsored by Kelly Writers House & the Poetry Foundation
Director of the Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing—Creative Writing ][ RealArts internships ]
Co-founder & co-director of PennSound—50,000 files ][ 15 million downloads annually
Teacher & host, "Kelly Writers House Fellows"—since 1999 ][ Susan Sontag, John Ashbery, Jamaica Kincaid, Laurie Anderson, Adrienne Rich, Joan Didion, John Edgar Wideman & more
Teacher, "Representations of the Holocaust"—a course on survivor testimony ][ my holocaust site
Click on the image for information about the book.