My Rothman talk in February 2016

Dear all — I just wanted to wish you all a good holiday season and be sure to invite you to my Rothman talk next February!

Stephanie Smith, 2015-2016 Rothman Faculty Summer Fellow (Department of English)
STILL ICE

Wednesday, 10 February 2016, 4:00-5:00 pm, Walker Hall 200

Inspired by my commissioned short story, “Winter Studio, 1901,” (Monet and American Expressionism, UF Press, 2015) my next novel, STILL ICE, tells the story of a medical anomaly, a human-chimera named Cody Hoving, who is also the great-great grandchild of a forgotten female Impressionist painter, Irene Hendricks Hoving. In utero, Cody had a twin, until one embryo absorbed the other so that, at birth, the baby is a hermaphrodite; her parents chose to have the infant’s genitalia altered and Cody is raised female, but she never easily identifies as such; later, she reverts to being a man, going on to become the CEO of a successful Boston AI and soft robotics company. When his grandfather’s dies, Cody finds himself the owner of the Hoving family home on Martha’s Vineyard and so returns there, with the intention to sell. But as the terrible winter wears off, he becomes deeply—perhaps too obsessively?—fascinated by his lost great-great grandmother. As Cody uncovers Irene’s secrets, his own quest for viable AI poses an increasingly urgent dilemma: has he, like both Victor Frankenstein and his own great-grandmother before him, been chasing after a creation better left unmade?

This event is part of the 2015-16 Fellowship Brown-Bag Series, which features informal talks by the Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere’s Rothman Faculty Summer Fellows, Tedder Doctoral Fellows, and Rothman Doctoral Fellows. Fellows will speak for 20-30 minutes in length about their funded work, leaving ample time for questions and discussion.

See http://www.humanities.ufl.edu/calendar/20160210-BB-Smith.html

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