{"id":19430,"date":"2025-04-07T09:27:25","date_gmt":"2025-04-07T13:27:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/wll\/?page_id=19430"},"modified":"2026-04-02T16:03:24","modified_gmt":"2026-04-02T20:03:24","slug":"bigfatbooks","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/wll\/news\/bigfatbooks\/","title":{"rendered":"Big Fat Books"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/h1>\n

\"\"The Seventh Annual Boston University<\/span> <\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n

\u201cBig Fat Books\u201d Symposium<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n

On Marcel Proust’s Swann\u2019s Way<\/em><\/strong><\/h1>\n

…took place on April 25th, 2025, <\/span>9:00-5:30<\/span><\/p>\n

The Howard Thurman Center<\/span><\/p>\n

808 Commonwealth Ave, Brookline MA<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u00a0<\/span>In Swann\u2019s Way<\/em>, the first of\u00a0 seven volumes in Marcel Proust\u2019s\u00a0 In Search of Lost Time<\/em>, the taste of a madeleine soaked in tea unleashes a flood of memories of the \u201cflowers, houses, and people\u201d in the small town of Combray during the narrator\u2019s childhood. The story then shifts further back in time to the era of the narrator\u2019s birth to focus on Charles Swann, a friend of the narrator\u2019s family whose obsessive love affair with Odette de Cr\u00e9cy anticipates the themes that Proust will go on to explore in the larger novel: the distortions of jealousy, the vulgarity of high society, the great powers of love and art, and what it means to lead an authentic life . <\/b><\/p>\n

We were also delighted to welcome Professor Jocelyne Kolb, whose keynote lecture draws from her forthcoming book about her father, Professor Philip Kolb, and his epic six-decade project to collect and annotate Proust\u2019s vast correspondence.\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

BU community members can view a recording of the symposium here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Jocelyn Kolb’s keynote lecture is available for all viewers here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Symposium Schedule:<\/span><\/h2>\n

 <\/p>\n

9:00 Coffee and Continental Breakfast<\/span><\/p>\n

9:15 Opening Remarks<\/span><\/p>\n

9:30-10:45 Panel I: Hawthorns<\/strong><\/p>\n

Moderated by: Marie McDonough<\/span><\/p>\n

    \n
  • Sean Desilets: “Acts of Necromancy: Proust, Kracauer, and the Physical”<\/span><\/li>\n
  • Yoon Sun Yang: “Kazuo Ishiguro Reads Proust”<\/span><\/li>\n
  • Stephanie Nelson: \u201cM. Swann and Mr Bloom, and their Narrators\u201d<\/span><\/li>\n
  • Anthony Stott: \u201cOn Some Motifs in Rooney and Proust\u201d<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    11:00-12:15 <\/strong><\/h2>\n

    Keynote Lecture <\/strong>“Growing Up with Proust”<\/strong><\/h2>\n

    Jocelyne Kolb<\/strong><\/h2>\n

    12:15-1:00 Lunch<\/strong><\/p>\n

    1-2:15 Panel II: Madeleines<\/strong><\/p>\n

    Moderated by: Jane K. Brown<\/span><\/p>\n

      \n
    • Elizabeth Giamatti: “Reading Proust On the Precipice”<\/span><\/li>\n
    • Diana Wylie: “Odette Speaks”<\/span><\/li>\n
    • Peter Schwartz: “Pastry in Proust”<\/span><\/li>\n
    • J. Keith Vincent: “The Verdurin Vampires”<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

      2:30-3:45 Panel III: Cattleyas<\/strong><\/p>\n

      Moderated by: Deborah Swedberg<\/span><\/p>\n

        \n
      • Marshall Brown: “In Search of Slow Time”<\/span><\/li>\n
      • Olivia Kulczycky: “Vessels in Proust”<\/span><\/li>\n
      • Rafael Hern\u00e1ndez: “On the Sonata”<\/span><\/li>\n
      • Will Waters: “Reading and Reverberation”<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

        4:00-5:30 Student Panel: “At last one can breathe!”<\/strong><\/p>\n

        Alexey Mozyaev, Alara Balcisoy, Alexander Smeulders, Alana Lopez, Hayley Stock, Wen Qi, Nicole Abrams, Riana Richani, Saoirse Killion, Kerry Wang, Chenyang Zhong<\/span><\/p>\n

        Sponsored by the Boston University Center for the Humanities and the Department of World Languages & Literatures<\/span><\/p>\n

         <\/p>\n

        Keynote Speaker:<\/b><\/p>\n

        Professor Jocelyne Kolb<\/strong><\/h3>\n

        Jocelyne Kolb\u2019s research has focused mostly on European Romanticism, with a concentration on the works of Heinrich Heine. She has written on music and literature in the works of Heine, Thomas Mann, and Wagner; on romantic irony; on literary decorum in Goethe, Diderot, Byron, and Heine; on Heine and literary antisemitism; and on literary correspondence. The book she completed as a fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, The Ambiguity of Taste: <\/em>Freedom and Food in European Romanticism<\/em> (University of Michigan Press, 1995), was awarded the Jean-Pierre Barricelli prize by the International Conference on Romanticism. A volume about the long and fruitful collaboration between Smith College and the University of Hamburg, edited with Rainer Nicolaysen, appeared in 2017: Smith College and the University of Hamburg: <\/em>Stories from 55 Years of a Transatlantic Friendship<\/em> (Hamburg University Press). Currently she is completing a book about the twenty-one volume edition of Proust\u2019s correspondence by her father, Philip Kolb, the working title of which is Editing Marcel Proust\u2019s Correspondence: A Scholar\u2019s Lifetime Pursuit. <\/em>Jocelyne Kolb received her B.A. from Smith College and her Ph.D. from Yale University. She is Professor of German Studies Emerita at Smith College, where she taught from 1977-79 and 1988-2018 and six times directed the Smith College Study Abroad Program at the University of Hamburg. From 1979-1987, Professor Kolb taught at Dartmouth College. She was the president of the North American Heine Society (NAHS) from 2006-2014.<\/p>\n

         <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

        The Seventh Annual Boston University \u201cBig Fat Books\u201d Symposium On Marcel Proust’s Swann\u2019s Way …took place on April 25th, 2025, 9:00-5:30 The Howard Thurman Center 808 Commonwealth Ave, Brookline MA       \u00a0In Swann\u2019s Way, the first of\u00a0 seven volumes in Marcel Proust\u2019s\u00a0 In Search of Lost Time, the taste of a madeleine soaked […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21862,"featured_media":19446,"parent":6,"menu_order":20,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"page-templates\/no-sidebars.php","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/wll\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/19430"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/wll\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/wll\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/wll\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21862"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/wll\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19430"}],"version-history":[{"count":29,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/wll\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/19430\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20334,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/wll\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/19430\/revisions\/20334"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/wll\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/wll\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/wll\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}