Thalia Field, whose book Bird Lovers, Backyard will be at Evergreen’s Art Lecture Series

10/18/17, from 11:30AM-1PM at the COM Recital Hall

Thalia will read from her new book Experimental Animals, which blends a massive feat of research—20 years and hundreds of thousands of pages —and translation (from French) with the study of the history of lab science and animal rights. A story of exploration of what realism and experimentalism means now, Experimental Animals is partly the story of Claude Bernard, a 19th-century French physiologist and vivisectionist who introduced the scientific method to medicine, and partly the story of his disastrous marriage to Fanny Martin, an animal rights activist avant la lettre. The event includes a staged reading from the book with participation from Evergreen faculty members Elizabeth Williamson (literature and gender studies) and Brian Walter (mathematics and theater).

Field’s latest is “nothing less than a history—gorgeously fictional, purposefully essayistic—of how we got where we are.” – John D’Agata

 

MORE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Thalia Field is a professor of Literary Arts at Brown University. Experimental Animals is her sixth book. She has published three collections with New Directions: Point and Line (2000), Incarnate: Story Material (2004), and Bird Lovers, Backyard (2010). Her performance novel, Ululu (Clown Shrapnel), was published with Coffee House Press, and she has two collaborations with French author Abigail Lang: A Prank of Georges (Essay Press, 2010) and the forthcoming, Leave to Remain. Before writing books, Thalia worked in theaters in Paris, Berlin, and New York.