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Mary Cappello, "Of Mood: An Atmospheric Reading"

Mary Cappello
March 24, 2017
4:00PM - 5:00PM
165 Thompson Library

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Add to Calendar 2017-03-24 16:00:00 2017-03-24 17:00:00 Mary Cappello, "Of Mood: An Atmospheric Reading" Mary Cappello is Professor of English and creative writing at the University of Rhode Island. A 2011 Guggenheim Fellow in Creative Arts/Nonfiction, Mary Cappello was a recipient of a 2015 Berlin Prize and was in residence at the American Academy in Berlin as the Holtzbrinck Fellow in the Fall 2015 semester. Her latest book, Life Breaks In: A Mood Almanack on the ineffable subject of “mood” and its affinities with clouds, sonic atmospheres, “sonorous envelopes,” and dioramas, appeared this past Fall from the University of Chicago Press. Rather than yoke mood to an age-old taxonomy of emotion, Cappello uses what she calls “cloud-writing” to explore mood as architecture and air; as envelope and sphere; as niche, sound, skin and reverberation; as wave, voice and hue; as temperature and tempo; as making and creating. Professor Cappello is the author of five books of literary nonfiction, including Called Back: My Reply to Cancer, My Return to Life (which won a Foreword Book of the Year Award, and Independent Publishers Prize), and Awkward: A Detour (a Los Angeles Times Bestseller) and has published numerous essays and experimental prose.The American Academy in Berlin Alumni Lecture Series 165 Thompson Library Humanities Institute huminst@osu.edu America/New_York public

Mary Cappello is Professor of English and creative writing at the University of Rhode Island. A 2011 Guggenheim Fellow in Creative Arts/Nonfiction, Mary Cappello was a recipient of a 2015 Berlin Prize and was in residence at the American Academy in Berlin as the Holtzbrinck Fellow in the Fall 2015 semester. Her latest book, Life Breaks In: A Mood Almanack on the ineffable subject of “mood” and its affinities with clouds, sonic atmospheres, “sonorous envelopes,” and dioramas, appeared this past Fall from the University of Chicago Press. Rather than yoke mood to an age-old taxonomy of emotion, Cappello uses what she calls “cloud-writing” to explore mood as architecture and air; as envelope and sphere; as niche, sound, skin and reverberation; as wave, voice and hue; as temperature and tempo; as making and creating. Professor Cappello is the author of five books of literary nonfiction, including Called Back: My Reply to Cancer, My Return to Life (which won a Foreword Book of the Year Award, and Independent Publishers Prize), and Awkward: A Detour (a Los Angeles Times Bestseller) and has published numerous essays and experimental prose.

The American Academy in Berlin Alumni Lecture Series