BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//wp-events-plugin.com//7.4.2//EN TZID:America/Los_Angeles X-WR-TIMEZONE:America/Los_Angeles BEGIN:VEVENT UID:536@1718.ucla.edu DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260421T130000 DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260421T140000 DTSTAMP:20260318T205321Z URL:https://1718.ucla.edu/events/nowicki-karmiole/ SUMMARY:Saxum Samson: The Monolith at the End of Milton DESCRIPTION:Lecture by Shaun Nowicki\, Ph.D. Candidate in English\, Univers ity of California\, Santa Barbara. Recipient of the 2025-26 Kenneth Karmio le Graduate Research Fellowship\n\nWhat does it mean to feel stony? John M ilton’s 1671 verse drama Samson Agonistes retells the last day of the bi blical Judge Samson\, as he moves from an initial feeling that his disable d body is a “Sepulcher\, a moving grave” to his eventual toppling of t he Temple of Dagon occasioned by a mysterious set of “rousing motions. ” This talk examines Milton’s deployment of the lithic as a structurin g metaphor for understanding both Samson’s initial abjection and the eve ntual return of his strength. In doing so\, the play both draws on emergen t cultural understandings of disability as an abject category of being and offers a refutation of that paradigm by considering the potential vivacit y of non-living things and the possibilities inherent in the alliances bet ween the human and nonhuman world. Stone marks the boundary of non-feeling life and allows Milton to ask if Samson’s disability bars him from the sensual world and how he will need to reconceptualize his perceptive horiz ons. Milton’s conception of stone as a dead\, senseless material draws o n both Aristotelean models of animation and new scientific paradigms that were reshaping the taxonomy of matter and life. Within these discourses an d their many unresolved tensions\, we find pathways for considering ways t o “feel stony” and avenues for Samson’s eventual transformation. The first part of this talk will examine Milton’s inheritances that inform the trajectory of his version of Samson\, including biblical exegetical pr actice and early modern poetry which positions Samson as “sottish” and unfeeling well before the loss of his prophetic strength. Milton breaks w ith these earlier authors by framing Samson’s lack of feeling as origina ting with his blinding\, and\, in doing so\, refocuses Samson’s travail around his relationship with his own body. In addition\, Nowicki will touc h on how new understandings of stone push our sense of what stone is and c an do\, including unresolved questions of stone’s animation in the perio d. The second part of the talk will examine Samson’s journey from unfeel ing to feeling\, and interrogate the ambiguities\, nuances\, and tensions in Milton’s portrayal of disability and political action.\n\nShaun Nowic ki is a Ph.D. candidate in English at the University of California\, Santa Barbara focusing on the intersections between environment and embodiment in early modern English literature. His dissertation examines how early mo dern writers deploy abjected forms of matter\, like dust\, dirt\, and ston e\, as metaphors for emergent conceptions of disability\, sexuality\, gend er\, and race. He has published reviews in Disability Studies Quarterly an d English Studies\, and he is a co-author of an essay on care in/for UCSB ’s Ballitore Collection in a forthcoming volume from Bucknell University Press.\n\n\n\nThe lecture will take place via Zoom. To register to attend \, please fill out the form here \n\n\n\nImage Description: Detail from T he. Holie. Bible.: conteynyng the olde Testament and the newe (Folger Shak espeare Library\, STC 2099 copy 2) depicting Samson toppling the Temple of Dagon.  https://digitalcollections.folger.edu/img115107 ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://1718.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2026/02 /Samson_toppling.png CATEGORIES:Lectures END:VEVENT BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:America/Los_Angeles X-LIC-LOCATION:America/Los_Angeles BEGIN:DAYLIGHT DTSTART:20260308T030000 TZOFFSETFROM:-0800 TZOFFSETTO:-0700 TZNAME:PDT END:DAYLIGHT END:VTIMEZONE END:VCALENDAR