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Annual Zantop Memorial Lecture

  • Spring 2025 Zantop Garden

    Photo submitted by Katherine Lenhart, Office of Communications.

  •  The Zantop Garden, in front of Richardson Hall, just to the north of Rollins Chapel.

  • laura wexler Zantop Lecturer S22 reception
  • Spring 2025 Zantop Garden 2

    Photo submitted by Katherine Lenhart, Office of Communications.

Susanne Zantop

The Zantop Memorial Lecture in Comparative Literature has been held in Susanne Zantop's honor since 2002. A Professor of German and Comparative Literature, Zantop was an active and adored member of the Dartmouth community for over 30 years until her murder in 2001.

Zantop, a pioneer of the MA program in Comparative Literature at Dartmouth, enjoyed taking an active role in the development of student life on campus. Each year since her death, we have honored Professor Zantop's memory by inviting scholars who share her ideals: past speakers have included Carlos Fuentes (Brown), Amy Hollywood (Harvard) and Jonathan Culler (Cornell), all of whom have demonstrated, like Zantop, a strong investment in the lives of students.

2002-Present

Zantop Lectures

2024-2024 Haun Saussy, University of Chicago, Comparison as Accompaniment, Not Mourning

2023-2024  Charisse Burden-Stelly, Wayne State University, "Black Scare, Red Scare"

2021-2022 Laura Wexler, Yale University, "Schooling the Punctum:  What the Children Know"

2020-2021 Mary Carruthers, New York University, "Dante's Intent Geometer: 'alta fantasia', vision, and creation in medieval poetry"

2018-2019 Mary Louise Pratt, New York University, Thinking across the colonial divide: From Micaela Bastidas to Clorinda Matto de Turner, Perú 1750-1910

2017-2018 Geoffrey Bennington, Emory University, Derrida and the Non-Political Opening of Politics

2016-2017 Irene Kacandes, Dartmouth College, Seven Lessons I Learned from Studying the Holocaust and How They Can Help Us Cope with the Disgrace of Our Times.

2015-2016 Emily Apter, New York University, Not Translated, Non-Equivalent, Incommensurate: Rethinking the Laws of Translation

2014-2015 David Eng, University of Pennsylvania, Reparations and the Human

2013-2014 Peggy Kamuf, University of Southern California, Reading Phenomena

2012-2013 David Damrosch, Harvard University, Grand Theft Ovid: Literary Studies in the Internet Age

2011-2012 Lydia Liu, Columbia University, The Psychic Life of Digital Media

2010-2011 Doris Sommer, Harvard University, Welcome Back: The Humanities as Civic Education

2009-2010 No lecture this year

2008-2009 Marianne Hirsch, Columbia University and Leo Spitzer, Dartmouth College (Zantop Garden dedication), School Pictures and their Afterlives

2007-2008 Amy Hollywood, Harvard University, Don't Touch Me: the Various Roles of Mary Magdalen

2006-2007 Frances Hasso, Oberlin College, Economies of Desire: Governmentality in Egypt and the United Arab Emirates

2005-2006 Carlos Fuentes, Brown University, The Creative Spirit as a Force for Humanism

2004-2005 Judith Ryan, Harvard University, Shots in the Park: Post-Colonial Fantasies in Gerhard Hauptmann's The Shot in the Park and Marguerite Duras's The Vice-Consul

2003-2004 Andreas Huyssen, Columbia University, Modernist Miniatures: Literary Snapshots of Urban Spaces

2002-2003 Jonathan Culler, Cornell University, Omniscient Narration

2001-2002 Diana Taylor, New York University, Lost in the Field of Vision: Reflections on Witnessing 911