Katherine Biers, Assistant Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, discusses Djuna Barnes’s illustrated journalism from the period covered by Newspaper Fiction: The New York Journalism of Djuna Barnes, 1913–1919, addressing the question of how Barnes, a female reporter in an overwhelmingly male profession, got others to take her seriously in early twentieth-century New York.
This talk will explore Barnes’s self-presentation, ornate illustrations, and writing style, which used a light touch to address weighty topics such as women’s suffrage and the dangers of tenement life, as well as more “frivolous” topics including the Ziegfeld Follies.
Meet in Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Forum, 4th Floor.
