How does a work of art become relevant?  Paintings by Winslow Homer and other nineteenth-century American artists invite shifts in both attention and perceptions of importance with enormous social stakes.  The talk looks at how these paintings are pragmatic works that make salience and make interest—that reveal versions of events that feel apropos of our lives the moment we turn to them.

Presented by UC Berkeley’s Department of English.

Elisa Tamarkin is Professor of English at UC Berkeley. Her new book, Apropos of Something: A History of Irrelevance and Relevance, will be published next month by University of Chicago Press.