Christie Cognevich, PhD, a member of the library staff, will give a series of lectures on Romantic Poets in June, July and August at the East Bank Regional Library, 4747 W. Napoleon, Metairie

7 p.m., Monday, June 12 - William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and the Beginnings of the English Romantic Era

This lecture will cover the English Romantic poets William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge and their famous "Preface to Lyrical Ballads" (published in 1800) which served as a poetic manifesto of their shared socio-cultural ideals. Attendees will explore Wordsworth's and Coleridge's beliefs that poetry should be accessible to all people regardless of class and education level, as well as how their interest in social issues emerged in their poetry and marked the beginning of the English Romantic Era.

7 p.m., Monday, July 10 – Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Robert Browning, and the Victorian Interest in Psychology

This lecture will cover the English Victorian poets Alfred, Lord Tennyson and Robert Browning and how some of their most famous poems demonstrate an increasing fascination with the human psyche during the nineteenth century. Attendees will explore how Tennyson's and Browning's Victorian Era works address how loss, grief, depression, and even sociopathy might manifest in the minds of their poetic speakers.

7 p.m., Monday, Aug. 21 - Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Christina Rossetti, and the English Sonnet Tradition

This lecture will cover the English Victorian poets Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Christina Rossetti and their contributions to the English sonnet tradition. Attendees will explore how Barrett Browning's Sonnets from the Portuguese and Rossetti's Monna Innominata are groundbreaking sonnet sequences which offer women's voices responding to and reimagining the sonnet traditions named for Petrarch and Shakespeare.

Dr. Christie Cognevich has a master's in English literature from the University of New Orleans and a doctoral degree in English literature from Louisiana State University. She taught English literature and writing for more than a decade. Her scholarly specialties include Romantic and Victorian poetry. Her doctoral thesis focused on the late-eighteenth-century British sonnet revival and poet Charlotte Smith, who was one of William Wordsworth's early inspirations.

In addition to Cognevich's published work in scholarly journals she has done extensive archival research and received fellowships to the Armstrong Browning Library at Baylor University to study their Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning papers and the Lilly Library at Indiana University to study their Sylvia Plath papers.

Additionally, Dr. Cognevich holds an MFA degree in creative writing for children and young adults from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. She is the author of the YA non-fiction books Depression: Insights and Tips for Teenagers (2020) and Dealing with Stress: Insights and Tips for Teenagers (2022), both published by Rowman & Littlefield. In addition to her non-fiction work on mental health, she writes YA fiction, picture books, and poetry.

For more information regarding this event, contact Chris Smith, Manager of Adult Programming for the library, at 504-889-8143 or wcsmith@jefferson.lib.la.us.