Sunday, March 15, 2026, 18.00-19.30pm UK time (Please check your own time zone).

Register for this virtual event here.

Join us for this book presentation of Mark Polizzotti‘s Why Surrealism Matters (Yale University Press, 2024). Mark will be joined in conversation by Abigail Susik (ISSS; Willamette University) as they examine the ongoing relevance of the Surrealist movement – its ideals, methods, means, and influence – more than 100 years after its official launching. From art and literature to film and television, not to mention education reform, labor issues, attitudes toward religion, sexual mores, gender relations, race relations, social unrest, and so much more, Surrealism has had so pervasive an impact that it often escapes our notice. As the poet John Ashbery remarked in 1968, “We all ‘grew up Surrealist’ without even being aware of it… Surrealism, as its originators hoped it would, immediately spread to all levels of life.”

A description of the book and summary of critical responses can be found here. Get 30% off orders of Why Surrealism Matters with code YUPISSS26 from now until the end of April 2026!

Mark Polizzotti‘s books include Revolution of the Mind: The Life of André Breton, Sympathy for the Traitor: A Translation Manifesto, Why Surrealism Matters, and Jump Cuts: Essays on Surrealism, Film, Music, Culture, and Other Utopian Topics. His translations of works by André Breton, Marguerite Duras, Gustave Flaubert, Patrick Modiano, and Arthur Rimbaud, among others, have won or been shortlisted for the National Book Award, the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize, the Scott Moncrieff Prize, and the International Booker Prize. A member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, a Chevalier of the French Order of Arts & Letters, and the recipient of an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Literature, he directs the publications program at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.