Nineteenth-Century American Literature, Religion, and the Search for Grace
Heather Ostman (Professor of English, SUNY Westchester Community College)
with a response by Julia Wold (English, UConn)
Wednesday February 19, 2025, 3:30pm, Humanities Institute Conference Room (HBL 4-209)
The event will also be livestreamed with automated captioning.
In this presentation, Heather Ostman will discuss her UCHI project, which seeks to find the links between the representations of religion and selected texts from America’s nineteenth-century, a time in the nation’s history when it sought to assert a distinctive culture and national identity—attempts challenged particularly by the Civil War. The New Testament notion of “grace” shapes the direction of this study, as it points to multiple writers’ concerns with ideas of “mercy,” “salvation,” and/or “redemption”—all of which lend themselves to the developing mythos of the American self-made individual, as shaped by earlier narratives, such as Benjamin Franklin’s eighteenth-century autobiography. The texts studied in this project, which include those by Emerson, Walt Whitman, Sojourner Truth, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Pierton Dooner, and Kate Chopin, present a complex picture of American letters, the contours and constraints of religious practice, and the search for grace—and ultimately, for meaning itself—amid the political, religious, and social constructs of nineteenth-century America. After a broad introduction to the study, this presentation will particularly focus on the intersections between fiction and religion through the lens of “grace” as they emerge in the work of Kate Chopin and in comparison to other texts studied in this project.
Heather Ostman is Professor of English, Director of the Humanities Institute, and Humanities Curriculum Chair at SUNY Westchester Community College in Valhalla, New York. She is the author/editor of eleven books, including, recently, Kate Chopin and the City: the New Orleans Stories (2024). She is the recipient of two NEH grants and a SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activities, and she is the co-founder and president of the Kate Chopin International Society. The UCHI Visiting Fellowship will enable Heather the time and space to work on her next book project, which is titled “Nineteenth-Century American Literature, Religion, and the Search for Grace.” As Christian idea, “grace” speaks to acts of mercy, salvation, and redemption.
Julia Wold Julia Wold is a doctoral candidate in the English Department specializing in Early Modern drama, primarily Shakespeare, and adaptation theory, focusing on video game adaptations. She received her MA in English from the University of North Dakota and her BA in English from Northern State University. Her work focuses on early modern philosophies of choice in both contemporaneous works (Hamlet, Paradise Lost) and modern video game adaptations of these works (Elsinore, The Talos Principle). She is also the co-host and editor of the Star Wars English Class podcast, exploring concepts ranging from literary theory to creative writing via Star Wars. At UCHI, Julia will complete her dissertation, “Adapting Choice: Shakespeare, Video Games, and Early Modern Thought,” which explores the connection between early modern conceptions of decision-making (“right reason”), theorized as “thoughtful choice” and video games adaptations of early modern texts.
Access note
If you require accommodation to attend this event, please contact us at uchi@uconn.edu or by phone (860) 486-9057. We can request ASL interpretation, computer-assisted real time transcription, and other accommodations offered by the Center for Students with Disabilities.
