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Associate Professor of English Natalia Rachel Singer was the keynote speaker at the 14th Annual English Graduate Students Association conference at the University of Missouri -- Columbia, invited by conference chair William B. Bradley '99. The theme of the conference, held in February 2005, was "Politics and the Artistic Response."

Singer's address was titled "Political Literature in an Age Like This: Orwell and his Descendants." At the closing session of the conference, Singer read from her memoir, Scraping By in the Big Eighties, and Bradley read from from an essay, titled "Force." He is in the Ph.D. program there.

According to its Web site, the conference "invites scholars, critics, and creative writers to come together to discuss the relationship between art and politics -— past and present, in the United States and other cultures. How does the politician inspire, agitate, or work against the artist? How does the artist respond to such inspiration, agitation, or oppression? Similarly, how does the artist inspire, agitate, or work against the politician?"

Posted: March 8, 2005