Works-in-Progress Series: Professor Toril Moi - Simone Weil: Writing for a General Intellectual Audience

Professor Toril Moi will present "Simone Weil: Writing for a General Intellectual Audience" and discuss her experience writing for the London Review of Books. 

The London Review of Books is Europe's leading magazine of culture and ideas. Published twice a month, it provides a space for some of the world's best writers to explore a wide variety of subjects in exhilarating detail – from art and politics to science and technology via history and philosophy, not to mention fiction and poetry. In the age of the long read, the LRB remains the pre-eminent exponent of the intellectual essay, admired around the world for its fearlessness, its range and its elegance. - The London Review of Books website 

Professor Moi states that other magazines also occupy this terrain: newer ones, like The Point, Public Books, and n+1; and older ones, like The New York Review of Books, Raritan, Salmagundi, and many more. What is the difference between writing for such magazines and an academic journal? Professor Moi will talk about what it’s like to write for the LRB and others, and try to say something about the salient differences between the kind of writing one can do for a more general magazine instead of the type of writing required by academic journals.  

We encourage anyone interested in English faculty members' work to participate. Attached you will find a copy of Professor Moi's, "I came with a sword” – her review in the LRB of The Subversive Simone Weil: A Life in Five Ideas by Robert Zaretsky, University of Houston – and a response from the author.  

Professor Moi will provide some opening comments at the session, followed by Q&A and an open discussion.   

Listen to Toril Moi discuss this piece on the  LRB podcast

Participate via Zoom