Opening Remarks for Honoring Eve Symposium, 31 October 2009

I’m grateful to the members of the Boston University (BU) Junior Faculty Gender and Sexuality Studies Group for organizing this symposium honoring Eve and also for very kindly inviting me to be here. It’s about twenty-five years ago that Eve was on the faculty at BU, living just down the block from here in a narrow little walk-up apartment in the shadow of Fenway Park. It surprised me, thinking back, that Eve taught at BU for only two years. That time had a much larger place in her life than its brevity might suggest.

Eve was very happy to be here. She had inherited $1,500 from her grandparents and used it to buy her first computer. It was the first of the “portable” computers. It had a four-inch screen, weighed twenty pounds, and looked remarkably like a portable sewing machine. From a restaurant-supply company she bought a cart on wheels—it was called a “rolling relish tray”—put the computer on it, wheeled it up to the edge of her bed, and sat propped up in bed writing Between Men.

As some of you know, Eve had been scheduled to lecture at BU this past February. She was so much looking forward to visiting here that, last fall, when her illness increasingly made it seem unlikely that she would be able to travel, she canceled various engagements one after another but hung on to the possibility of the BU lecture until the very last moment, when it was inescapably clear that she simply could not do it.

This symposium is, to me, a powerful way of honoring Eve’s wish to be present at BU. Present not just in our memory of her, but as she had wished to be with her lecture, present in her ongoing work. As is clear from the rich program of talks and performances that are planned for today, Eve’s work is ongoing. It continues to give us pleasure, continues to make us just a little bit smarter, and continues to give us encouragement and ideas as we develop new work of our own.

I want to take this opportunity to mention another effort aimed at continuing Eve’s work. Several of us are developing a website that will soon be found at EveKosofskySedgwick.net. We have several ambitions for this website. We want it to provide a guide to those who are new to Eve’s life and work and to provide an archival resource to her friends and colleagues. We also want it to be a portal to events, publications, and other websites concerned with work by and about Eve. Finally, we hope to provide a site where conversations occur—a place for developing and sharing work that draws on or intersects with hers. We’ll be exploring ways of nurturing such an online community, and we welcome suggestions, both while we’re building the website and after it’s been launched. We invite your participation. Thanks.