The New School's Department of Humanities is pleased to present

LOLITA in America
Saturday, September 27, 2008
New York, New York

Speakers include Alfred Appel, Jr., author of The Annotated Lolita and Nabokov’s Dark Cinema; Leland de la Durantaye, author of Style is Matter: The Moral Art of Vladimir Nabokov; Laura Frost, author of Sex Drives; Fred Hills, former Editor-in-Chief of McGraw-Hill and Nabokov's editor in the last decade of his life; Nina Khrushcheva, author of Imagining Nabokov: Russia Between Art and Politics; Dominic Pettman, author of Love and Other Technologies; Ellen Pifer, author of Nabokov and the Novel, Demon or Doll, and Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita : A Casebook; Ron Rosenbaum, author of The Shakespeare Wars ; and Lila Azam Zanganeh, literary journalist and Nabokov scholar.

2008 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita in the United States. Initially rejected by American editors (one editor recommended that “it be buried under a stone for a thousand years”), Lolita appeared under a little-known imprint in Paris in 1955. It was 1958 before this provocative “time bomb” found an American publisher.

Lolita in America, a day-long symposium, reflects on the enormous impact this novel has had on American culture and, indeed, on cultures worldwide. Panelists will discuss Lolita in the context of American literature, U.S. publishing in the 1950’s, and world literature. Alfred Appel, Jr. will discuss his studies with Nabokov at Cornell and the cultural context of the 40’s and 50’s. Ellen Pifer will shed light on the controversies and the remarkable achievement of Nabokov’s American masterpiece. Fred Hills will describe his first encounter with Lolita and his eventual collaborations with the author. Nina Krushcheva will share her first reactions to Lolita as a Russian twelve-year-old and her experiences teaching Lolita in Russia after her own emigration to the U.S. Scholars of Russian literature will discuss the roots of Nabokov’s startling work, and Dominic Pettman will discuss the technologies of love in Nabokov’s novel.

Lolita in America is particularly well-timed. Nabokov is still making news in 2008. With the collaboration of the Nabokov Estate, a panel of journalists and scholars will explore Lolita’s possible relationship with The Original of Laura—Nabokov’s final unfinished, unpublished, and, in line with the author’s wishes, almost-burned novel—which is only now (controversially) slated for publication.

We conclude the day with a screening of Stanley Kubrick’s film version of Lolita.

Admission to Lolita in America is free. Registration is required by 9/21/08.

Sponsored by the Department of Humanities in partnership with the Writing Program, the New School Bachelor’s Program, the Department of Foreign Languages, the Graduate Program in International Affairs, the Department of Media Studies and Film, and the Eugene Lang College Department of Writing and Literature.