Nelly Rosario on How the Medicines Go Down: Anatomy of a novel in progress

This event is open to the public. In-person attendees must be masked and must present a Williams ID (purple or yellow) or a vaccination card at the door. There will also be a live stream available. Please click the link below if you wish to join the webinar. Remote attendees will be able to ask questions through the Q&A feature of the Zoom webinar.
https://williams.zoom.us/j/96924583424?pwd=RlN2RDErVUxmRXRQK0V5RFFVVnJ5QT09

In this talk, Nelly Rosario discusses her process of researching and writing How the Medicine Go Down, a speculative novel-in-progress that explores how medical cultures and histories have impacted communities throughout the Americas. Episodic and polyphonic in form, the narrative centers on a family torn between medical activism and personal obligations. Their stories offer reparative visions of a future populated by individuals who reclaim stewardship of their own well being and of their environment.

Nelly Rosario is the author of Song of the Water Saints: A Novel, winner of a PEN/Open Book Award. She holds an MFA from Columbia University. Her fiction and creative nonfiction work appears in various journals and anthologies, most recently in Critical Dialogues in Latina and Latino Studies (NYU Press, 2021) and Teaching Black: Pedagogy, Practice, and Perspectives on Writing (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2021). She has been on faculty at Texas State University-San Marcos, The City College of New York-CUNY, Columbia University, and was a Visiting Scholar in the MIT Comparative Media/Writing Program. Rosario is currently Assistant Director of Writing for the MIT Black History Project and Associate Professor in the Latina/o Studies Program at Williams College.

Photo credit: Sandro Moran

The Faculty Lecture Series aims to present big ideas beyond disciplinary boundaries. Organized by the faculty members of the Lecture Committee, the Faculty Lecture Series was founded in 1911 by Catherine Mariotti Pratt, the spouse of a faculty member who wanted to “relieve the tedium of long New England winters with an opportunity to hear Williams professors talk about issues that really mattered to them.” From these humble and lighthearted beginnings, the Faculty Lecture Series has grown to become an important forum for tenured professors to share their latest research with the larger intellectual community of the college. The full spring 2022 series is listed below:

The upcoming talks are listed below:

Mar 3: Li Yu, “How to Teach a Child to Read: Lessons from Chinese Cultural History”

Mar 10: Tim Lebestky, “Lessons Learned from Flies”

Mar 17: Lama Nassif, “What does Your Noticing say about Your language Learning? Insights from Second Language Acquisition Research“