Elisa Tamarkin
Elisa Tamarkin is the Katharine Bixby Hotchkis Professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley. Her work explores the history and politics of ideas, with particular attention to relevance, attention, war, and the forms through which we understand contemporary life. Her most recent books are Done in a Day: Telex from the Fall of Saigon and Apropos of Something: A History of Irrelevance and Relevance, both published by the University of Chicago Press. Done in a Day was named one of Lit Hub’s most anticipated books of 2026 and combines history, criticism, and memoir to revisit the fall of Saigon and the decline of the American newspaper correspondent.
Elisa Tamarkin on the fall of Saigon and the end of an era in war reporting with special guest Dean Deborah L. Nelson
How does it feel to recognize a historical ending while still living through it?
Named one of LitHub’s most anticipated books of the year, Done in a Day: Telex from the Fall of Saigonreconstructs the final days of the Vietnam War through the papers of the author’s stepfather, the Chicago Daily News Saigon bureau chief, who filed the last American correspondent’s report as Saigon fell in 1975. Social historian Elisa Tamarkin connects this personal history to the changing culture of war correspondence and the decline of the city newspaper, offering a meditation on how we understand, and record, the end of an era.
Tamarkin will situate the evacuation of Saigon in the mindset of the 1970s, psychologies of belief and defeat, existentialist philosophy, and the ongoing problem of raising political consciousness around world events, even when we have access to all the information we ever need to know.
Guest Interlocutor: Deborah L. Nelson
Dean of the Arts & Humanities Division Deborah L. Nelson will join Tamarkin for a special conversation following Tamarkin’s presentation, bringing her own work in twentieth-century American culture and politics to questions of history, memory, and journalism.
Free and open to the public, but registration is required. This event is presented in partnership with the University of Chicago Press and Seminary Co-op.
Speaker(s): Elisa Tamarkin and Deborah L. Nelson