Second Thursday Lecture Series
Whitman's Southern Sojourn with Stefan Schöberlein and Zachary Turpin
Second Thursday Lecture Series
Whitman's Southern Sojourn with Stefan Schöberlein and Zachary Turpin
Join us for a virtual evening with Stefan Schöberlein and Zachary Turpin as they discuss their upcoming book Whitman's Southern Sojourn: Rediscovering the Poet in New Orleans, 1848 (University of Iowa Press, December 2025). This program is sponsored by the Friends of the Cabildo as part of the Second Thursday Lecture Series. It is free and open to the public, but registration is required. The program will take place on Zoom. Please register here and a link will be emailed to you on the day of the lecture.
About the Book
Walt Whitman’s 1848 stint in New Orleans was a crucial moment of development for the poet. Working for The Daily Crescent, a new local newspaper, Whitman spent his days strolling through the multiracial city and turning his impressions into prose sketches, news items, and fiery editorials. While in the southern metropolis, the young journalist brushed shoulders with American soldiers returning from Mexico, cheered on European revolutions in the French Quarter, and explored raunchy performances at the St. Charles Theatre. Yet 1848 was also the year Whitman began lobbying for “Free Soil,” after encountering in New Orleans, Creole citizens, enslaved Black people, and the slaveholder who would become America’s next president.
Far from some brief escape, New Orleans was a significant milestone in Whitman’s development as a political firebrand, as well as a major step for a professional journalist on the rise. Through a wealth of new texts, contexts, and personalities, Stefan Schöberlein and Zachary Turpin paint a vivid picture of a writer on the verge of Leaves of Grass, embracing the contradictions and the multitudes of New Orleans.
About the Authors
Stefan Schöberlein is associate professor of English at Texas A&M University–Central Texas. He is author of Writing the Brain: Material Minds and Literature, 1800–1880, among others. He lives in Georgetown, Texas.
Zachary Turpin is assistant professor of American Literature at the University of Idaho. He is the author and coeditor of such works as Every Hour, Every Atom: A Collection of Walt Whitman’s Early Notebooks and Fragments (Iowa, 2020). Turpin lives in Moscow, Idaho.
