After our successful 23rd Festival completed October 18-20, the Brattleboro Literary Festival invites you to join us on Friday, November 8, at 5 pm for a Zoom conversation with historian Laura Beers on the 75th anniversary of George Orwell's "1984."
In Orwell's Ghosts, historian Laura Beers considers Orwell's full body of work—his six novels, three nonfiction works, and brilliant essays on politics, language, and the class system—to examine what "Orwellian" truly means and reveal the misconstrued thinker in all his complexity.
She explores how Orwell's writing on free speech addresses the proliferation of "fake news" and the emergence of cancel culture, highlights his vivid critiques of capitalism and the oppressive nature of the British Empire, and, in contrast, analyzes his failure to understand feminism. Timely, wide-ranging, and thought-provoking, Orwell's Ghosts investigates how the writings of a lionized champion of truth and freedom can help us face the crises of modernity.
Laura Beers is professor of history at American University in Washington, D.C and the author of "Orwell's Ghosts: Wisdom and Warnings for the Twenty-First Century," "Red Ellen: The Life of Ellen Wilkinson, Socialist, Feminist, Internationalist," which was awarded the 2017 Stansky Prize for best book published in the field of modern British history, and "Your Britain: Media and the Making of the Labour Party."
She is the co-editor of" Brave New World: Imperial and Democratic Nation-Building" in Britain between the Wars.
In addition to her academic work, Professor Beers has written on British and comparative politics for CNN, the Washington Post's "Made by History" column, the New Statesman, and the London Review of Books. She lives in Washington, DC.
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