Estíbaliz Encarnación Pinedo presents a panel titled “Beat generation goddess ruth weiss (re)considered” for the British Association of American Studies digital conference, April 8, 2021, in support of the book ruth weiss Beat Poetry, Jazz, Art (De Gruyter 2021).European Beat Studies NetworkBAASChad Weidner Reaching Towards the Light: Transitory Spaces and the Negated Material Body in Selected Texts by ruth weissBen Heal ruth weiss: Transnationalism and ResistancePolina Mackay ruth weiss and the Poetics of the DesertEstíbaliz Encarnación-Pinedo Gender and identity in ruth weissStefanie Pointl Place, Movement, and Identity in ruth weiss’s PoetryPeggy Pacini ruth weiss: a poetics grounded in intermediality and performanceFrida Forsgren ruth weiss and painted haikusThomas Antonic The ruth weiss PapersAbstract: This session brings together a selection of European Beat Studies Network members toredress, and in some cases introduce, the work produced by Beat-associated poet ruth weiss (1928-2020). Conceived as flash presentations (limited to 10 minutes followed by workshop-like discussions)the aim is to offer a wide selection of critical and aesthetic points of entrance into weiss’s work.Chair: Estíbaliz Encarnación-Pinedoruth weiss: Transnationalism and ResistanceBenjamin J. Heal resituates and recovers the work of weiss through a transnational context of poeticexperimentalism, outlining the many liminalities in her life, art and writing, with a particular focus on her ongoing attack on the conventions of authorship and constructions of the singular literary geniusthrough the use of contradiction, collaboration and various forms of multimedia expression.ruth weiss and the Poetics of the DesertPolina Mackay explores ruth weiss’ depiction of the desert as a multifaceted symbol of contrastingvalues. She compares weiss’s images of the desert as a local of both light and shadow or life and death to the socio political poems of poets like Sandra Osborne which write against America’s wars beyond its border (e.g., invasion of Iraq). The aim is to encourage discussion on ruth weiss’s relevance to current concerns in American poetry.Gender and identity in ruth weissEstíbaliz Encarnación-Pinedo explores ruth weiss’s complication and blurring of establishedcategorizations through which she documents both the struggle and the balance, the exclusion and the dissolution of the (de)gendered selves that inhabit her work. To study the ways in which weiss’sresolves these tensions, she analyzes the thematic traits as well as the stylistic choices that allow weiss to write beyond gender in collections such as Steps (1958), Desert Journal (1977) or Single Out (1978).The ruth weiss PapersThomas Antonic delivers an overview and evaluation of the ruth weiss papers. The aim of it is toprovide scholars with information about the content and extent of published and unpublished writtenand audiovisual material, as well as other documents such as photographs and correspondence. It isintended, for future analyses, to make scholarship aware of the vast amount of works ruth weiss hascreated over the past seven decades which go far beyond the scope of her published poetry collections that were the only subject of studies to date.Place, Movement, and Identity in ruth weiss’s PoetryStefanie Pointl examines the representation of movement in ruth weiss’s autobiographical poetry,arguing that weiss, as an Austrian American Beat writer and Holocaust survivor, provides an alternative perspective on the recurrent Beat theme of mobility. In her writing, she constructs a transnational identity founded on border-crossing movements and the resulting interpersonal connections. Through depictions of both physical and metaphorical journeys, weiss’s poetry portrays movement as a unifying link between people from different cultural backgrounds that replaces national origins as a source of identification.ruth weiss: a poetics grounded in intermediality and performancePeggy Pacini focuses on weiss's performance at the Summer of Love 2007 to examine how this shedslight on the essence of her poetry composing and performing practice. A series of micro-analysis of “the audiotext" and of contextual factors will contribute to comprehend how this performance releaseswhat weiss herself defined as the “free flowing force moving outward from the unconscious towardsself and other” (Grace 2004:58) that not only defines her poetic language, but a poetics grounded inintermediality and performance.Reaching Towards the Light: Transitory Spaces and the Negated Material Body in Selected Texts byruth weissChad Weidner focuses on what an environmental understanding can bring to many Beat-affiliatedwriters like ruth weiss. weiss contributed to the international flourishing of Beat poetics, but questionsremain: To what extent can green criticism benefit by engaging unfamiliar and experimentaltransnational texts written by women? Can Beat ...
