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CFP 3rd ENSFR conference

Short Fiction: Co-texts and Contexts

University of Leuven (KU Leuven), 4-5-6 May 2017

Since the emergence of the modern short story as a distinct literary form in the second half of the nineteenth century, many critics and writers have sought to decide what it is exactly that distinguishes the short story from longer fiction, such as the novella or the novel – Is it length? Conciseness? A specific thematic concern? Or a particular stylistic feature? The matter has not yet been settled. Perhaps we need to look to more circumstantial, material elements for a pragmatic answer to that question. Indeed, one could argue that one of the discerning features of the short story is that it is rarely if ever published separately. Instead, it appears as one text among others, whether in a newspaper or magazine, an anthology or collection, a short story cycle or sequence, on a website or in a twitter feed. Precisely these different formats and contexts of publication have also been instrumental in the birth and development of the modern short story as we know it today. As several critics have argued, the short story rose to fame as a new and fashionable literary form in the 19th century thanks to the boom in the periodical press. Similarly, its decline in popularity in the second half of the 20th century correlates with the decimation of magazines willing to publish short fiction. And one could argue that the renewed interest in short fiction today is related to the proliferation of new publishing opportunities through digital media.

This necessary co-textuality of the short story or the different contexts in which it is published and read are slowly receiving more critical attention. Dean Baldwin’s Art and Commerce in the British Short Story: 1880-1950 documents the rise and fall of British short fiction through a study of its modes of publication. Other studies address the processes of unification and collection that go into the making of short story cycles, anthologies or collections, while the interactions between short fiction and new (digital) media formed the topic of the previous ENSFR conference.

This third annual ENSFR conference wants to further explore the many different ways in which short fiction interacts with its co-texts and contexts in different literary traditions. Questions we would like to address are:

  • How have the publication formats of short fiction changed over the centuries?
  • How is the development of the short story bound up with the printing and publishing context of a particular time and space?
  • To what extent have the publication contexts of the short story influenced its perception as an avant-garde or popular genre, or as highbrow/middlebrow/lowbrow literary form?
  • What are the new publishing formats emerging today and how do they influence the short story?
  • What is the interaction between short fiction and other media (e.g. illustrations, typography, photographs) in such multimedial publishing formats as the magazine or the website?
  • What is the importance of the book trade and its marketing strategies on the writing and publishing of short stories?
  • How is the co-textual nature of a single-author collection different from that of an anthology or from a short story cycle? How does this context influence our reading of a given short story, as it moves, for instance, from a magazine, to a collection and on to an anthology or syllabus?
  • How does a short story take on new meaning throughout its migration across different publishing contexts? What metamorphoses can be observed from a story’s initial publication to later, revised versions?
  • What connections might be made within an author’s complete oeuvre? For example, do authors sometimes return to initial stories or storyworlds later in his/her career, creating connections that extend beyond the temporal frame of an initial publication, but also beyond the material boundaries of a single collection?
  • In what way do stories interact with the socio-political context of the time and place they reflect? How do they evoke that larger context within a restricted frame?

In other words, possible topics can include, but are not limited to, the following themes:

  • The short story cycle
  • The anthology
  • The collection
  • The story as part of an author’s oeuvre
  • Short fiction in magazines
  • Short fiction and other media
  • The short story and the book trade
  • The short story and prize culture
  • The short story and its socio-political contexts
  • Interpreting the short story

We welcome papers (in both English and French) that address these questions and topics either through individual case studies or more theoretical or historical explorations as well as in different literary traditions. Proposals for three-paper panels are also welcome. 300-word abstracts for 20-minute papers should be sent to Elke D’hoker (elke.dhoker@kuleuven.be) and Bart Van den Bossche (Bart.vandenbossche@kuleuven.be) by the 15th of January 2017. Contributors should also send a short biographical note indicating institutional affiliation. Further information about the conference will be posted on the conference website http://www.shortfiction.be.  The conference will take place in the Leuven Irish college (http://www.leuveninstitute.eu/site/index.php).

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The American Short Story October Savannah 2016: Conference Programme

FInal Programme The American Short Story: An Expansion of the Genre

 

An American Literature Association Symposium

Sponsored by the Society for the Study of the American Short Story

October 20-22, 2016

 

Symposium Director: James Nagel, University of Georgia

 

Hyatt Regency Savannah

Two W Bay Street

Savannah, Georgia 31401

The American Short Story:  An Expansion of the Genre

An American Literature Association Symposium

Sponsored by the Society for the Study of the American Short Story

October 20-22, 2016

Hyatt Regency Savannah

Two W Bay Street

Savannah, Georgia 31401

 

 

Symposium Director: James Nagel, University of Georgia

 

 

Acknowledgments:

 

The conference director wishes to express his appreciation to a number of people who provided help with planning the program, especially my colleagues in the Society for the Study of the American Short Story. Olivia Carr Edenfield, Executive Coordinator of American Literature Association, handled all hotel logistics and arrangements and served as Site Director. Oliver Scheiding, Johannes

Gutenberg-Universität, served as International Coordinator, advertising the symposium in Europe and encouraging colleagues in American Studies to attend. Dustin Anderson helped in many ways, especially in taking responsibility for the society website and handling technical details. Many other people contributed time and effort in organizing panels and other aspects of the program, among them Robert Clark, Gloria Cronin, and a score of scholars across the country who organized panels for this meeting. I also thank Dartmouth College for my continuing appointment as a Resident Scholar and the use of Baker Library, a most congenial environment. My role as Eidson Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of Georgia allows me to continue the most important institutional connection of my life. I offer special thanks to Alfred Bendixen, the founder and Executive Director of the American Literature Association, without whose generous assistance this symposium would not have been possible.

 

 

 

Thursday, October 20, 2016

Registration 5:30-7:30 p.m.  (Scarborough Foyer)

 

Welcome Reception  5:30-7:30 p.m. (Savannah Room)

 

Special Event   6:45 p.m.

A Reading by Judith Ortiz Cofer

 (Savannah Room)

 
 

Friday, October 21, 2016

Registration: 8:00-8:40 a.m.

(Scarborough Foyer)

 

 

Program

 

Session 1-A: 8:40-10:00 (Scarborough One)

 

Contemporary Writers

Chair: Benjamin Mangrum, Davidson College

 

  1. “Earth as Memento Mori in Don DeLillo’s ‘Human Moments in World War III,” R. Mac Jones, University of South Carolina
  2. “Approaching Richard Brautigan’s The Tokyo-Montana Express through Buddhist Non-duality,” Clara Reiring, University of Duesseldorf
  3. “Narrative Empathy and Short Fiction: The Curious Case of George Saunders,” Michael Basseler, Justus Liebig University (Giessen, Germany)

 

Session 1-B: 8:40-10:00 (Scarborough Two)

 

American Women Writers

Chair:   Robert Luscher, University of Nebraska, Kearney

 

  1.  “Writing Poverty, Race, and Class from a Black Southern Perspective,” Caroline Gebhard, Tuskegee University
  2. “Jane Addams’s Gendered Counter-Narratives: Storytelling to Claim Gendered Political Agency,” Sarah Ruffing Robbins, Texas Christian University
  3. “As It Was in the Beginning: The Gothic in Early Indigenous Literature,” Cari M. Carpenter, West Virginia University
  4. “`Most remarkable fruits’: Environmental Education in Stowe’s Queer Little People,” Karen L. Kilcup, University of North Carolina, Greenboro

Respondent: Karen A. Weyler, University of North Carolina, Greensboro

 

 

 

 

 

 

Session 1-C: 8:40-10:00 (Scarborough Three)

 

American Short Stories

Chair: Steven Florczyk, Longwood University

 

  1. “Close(d) Reading and Expansive Meaning in Jessie Fauset’s Short Stories,” Masami Sugimori, Florida Gulf Coast University
  2. “Alienation and the Peculiar Institution in Short stories by Machado de Assis and Charles Chesnutt,” Michael Janis, Morehouse College
  3. “Isolation, Intimacy, and the Comfort of Clutter in T. C. Boyle’s `Filthy with Things’,” Avis Hewitt, Grand Valley State University

 

 

Special Event

 

A Roundtable Discussion

 

Session 1-D: 8:40-10:00 (Scarborough Four)

 

Memory and Time: Saul Bellow’s Tie to His Family of Origin: “The Old System”            and “By the St. Lawrence” 

Chair: Gloria Cronin, Brigham Young University

 

Panelists: Greg Bellow, Adam Bellow, Liesha Bellow, Daniel Bellow, Alexandra Bellow

 

 

 

Session 2-A: 10:10-11:30 (Scarborough One)

 

Jewish American Stories I

Chair, Victoria Aarons, Trinity University

 

  1.  “Reading Malamud’s ‘Magic Barrel’ as Story, Collection, and Lecture,” Sandor Goodhart, Purdue University
  2. “J. D. Salinger’s ‘Seymour’ and the Jewish Sensibility,” Hilene Flanzbaum, Butler University
  3. “‘I am the fiction; the suitcase is myself’: Elisa Albert’s Rothian Fiction,” Aimee Pozorski, Central Connecticut State University

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Session 2-B: 10:10-11:30 (Scarborough Two)

Modern Issues

Chair: Robert Clark, College of Coastal Georgia

 

  1. “Zitkala-Ša and Pauline Johnson: Among the First Women to Carry the Native Voice into the Mainstream,” Ekaterina Kupidonova, University of Nebraska
  2. “Crossing Borders of Nation and Race in Langston Hughes’s The Ways of White Folks,” Joshua Murray, University of Akron
  3. “Destabilizing Powers: The Work of Machines in Ernest Hemingway’s ‘In Another Country’,” Lisa Narbeshuber and Lance La Rocque, Acadia University

 

 

Session 2-C: 10:10-11:30 (Scarborough Three)

 

New Strategies in the Short Story

Chair: Oliver Scheiding, University of Mainz

 

  1. “Lydia Davis and the Terrible Humiliation of Reading,” Lynn Blin, Université Paul- Valéry Montpellier 3 (France)
  2. “Derrick Bell’s Sci-Fi Stories: African American Satire, Law, and the Myth of Post- Racial America,” Christopher A. Shinn, Howard University
  3. “Commodity Fetishism in Frank Chin’s ‘Railroad Standard Time’,” Zeineb Abbassi, Université de Sousse (Tunisia)

 

 

Session 2-D: 10:10-11:30 (Scarborough Four)

 

The Story-Cycle Novel: A Necessary Fiction

Chair: Alfred Bendixen, Princeton University

 

  1. “The Female Bildung: Embodying the Story Cycle from Jewett to Porter,”

Candace Waid, University of California, Santa Barbara

  1. “Recognition and Reflection in The Golden Apples: The Story-Cycle Novel as Resistance to Narrative Imperialism,” Leah Faye Norris, University of California, Santa Barbara
  2. “Is There a Front-Porch Novel and How Does It Relate to the Back Porch of Fiction?” Trudier Harris, University of Alabama
  3. “Puzzle Pieces and Parts Becoming Whole: Toward a Tribalography of Erdrich,” Shirley Samuels, Cornell University

 

 

 

 

Session 3-A: 11:40-12:50 (Scarborough One)

Jewish American Stories II

Chair: Gloria Cronin, Brigham Young University

 

  1. “The Melting Pot and Progressive Reform: Anzia Yezierska and the Jewish American Future,” Sharon Oster, University of Redlands
  2. “’Envy’: Cynthia Ozick Meets Melanie Klein,” Andrew Gordon, University of Florida
  3. “Bernard Malamud’s Kleyne Mentshelekh: Short Stories as Parables of Conscience,” Victoria Aarons, Trinity University

 

 

Session 3-B: 11:40-12:50 (Scarborough Two)

 

New Forms of Short Fiction

Chair: Dustin Anderson, Georgia Southern University

 

  1. “Vignettes: Micro-Fictions in the Nineteenth Century Newspaper,”

Ryan Cordell and Jonathan Fitzgerald, Northeastern University

  1. “Jack London’s ‘The Dream of Debs’ and Working-Class Agency in the Naturalist Short Story,” Jon Falsarella Dawson, University of Georgia
  2. “Embracing the Religious Backcountry: Chris Offutt’s Kentucky Straight as Mythopoetic Collage,” Philipp Reisner, Heinrich Heine University (Düsseldorf)

 

Session 3-C: 11:40-12:50(Scarborough Three)

New Approaches

Chair: Robert Luscher, University of Nebraska, Kearney

 

  1. “Connective Tissue in Linked Short Stories: Place, Character, Image Patterns, and Theme,” Warren G. Green, Dominican University
  2. “American Stories of War: Tim O’Brien and Phil Klay,” Kelly Roy Polasek,

Wayne State University

  1. “Dark Night of the Soul: Complicating Race in Welty’s ‘The Demonstrators’,” Charles Tyrone, Arkansas Tech University

 

 

 

 

 

Session 3-D: 11:40-12:50 (Scarborough Four)

Contemporary Stories

Chair: James W. Thomas, Pepperdine University

 

  1. “The October Country: The Unheimlich Homes of Ray Bradbury,” Tracy Fahey, Limerick School of Art and Design (Ireland)
  2. “Poetry and Politics, Labor and Love: Carver, Spahr, Buuck, and Permanent Impermanence,” Diana Rosenberger, Wayne State University
  3. “Leroy and Norma Jean Meet Rock, Doris, and Dr. Strangelove in Bobbie Ann Mason’s `Shiloh’,” Deborah Wilson, Arkansas Tech University

 

 

 

 

Special Event: Lunch: 1:00-2:10

(Windows)

 

Speaker: James Nagel

“The Future of the

Society for the Study of the American Short Story”

 

 

Registration: 1:30-2:00

(Scarborough Foyer)

 

 

 

 

Session 4-A: 2:20-3:50 (Scarborough One)

African American Short Stories

Chair: Maryemma Graham, University of Kansas

 

  1. “The Civil Rights Movement and the Black Short Story,” Julius Fleming, University of Maryland
  2. “Geo-Tagging Edward P. Jones,” Kenton Rambsy, University of Texas at Arlington
  3. “African American Short Stories on Film,” Dante James, University of Dayton
  4. “Literacy and the Power of Communication in Octavia Butler’s Short Stories,” Briana Whiteside, University of Alabama

 

 

Session 4-B: 2:20-3:50 (Scarborough Two)

 

Stories of the American South

Chair: J. Gerald Kennedy, Louisiana State University

 

  1. “Numbered, Numbered: Commemorating the Civil War Dead in Constance Fenimore Woolson’s `Rodman the Keeper’,” Kathleen Diffley, University of Iowa
  2. “Peter Taylor’s Aesthetic of Darkness,” Thomas F. Haddox, University of Tennessee
  3. “Ernest Gaines’s Bloodline: Race, Region, Masculinity and the

Short Story Cycle,” John Wharton Lowe, University of Georgia

 

 

Session 4-C 2:20-3:50 (Scarborough Three)

 

New Writers on the American Scene

Chair: James W. Thomas, Pepperdine University

 

  1. “Female Madness and the Hazards of Black National Belonging in Ayana Mathis’s The Twelve Tribes of Hattie,” Caroline A. Brown, University of Montreal
  2. “Indians in America: Cultural and Gendered Contact Zones in Chitra Divakaruni’s `Silver Pavements, Golden Roofs’,” Marilyn Edelstein, Santa Clara University
  3. “Possession and North American Identity in Anne Hébert’s `Le torrent’,” Conor Scruton, Western Kentucky University

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Session 4-D 2:20-3:50 (Scarborough Four)

 

A Roundtable Discussion: “Interesting Intersections: When Short            Stories become Film”

Chair: James H. Meredith

 

Participants:  Allen Josephs, University of West Florida

Jeanne Fuchs, Hofstra University

James H. Meredith, Colorado State University–Global

Kathleen Robinson-Malone, Eckerd College

  1. Stone Meredith, Colorado State University–Global

 

 

Session 5-A 4:00-5:20 (Scarborough One)

Edgar Allan Poe

Chair: Richard Kopley, Pennsylvania State University, DuBois

 

  1. “Reconstructions of Poe’s ‘Tales of the Folio Club’ since 1928: Approaches and Prospects,” Alexander Hammond, Washington State University
  2. “Edgar Allan Poe, ‘Psyche Zenobia,’ and the Tradition of Anti-Feminist Gothic Satire,” David Cody, Hartwick College
  3. “Fethers and Spectacles:  How Music Shapes Genre in Poe’s Short Stories,” Charity McAdams, Arizona State University

 

 

 

Session 5-B 4:00-5:20 (Scarborough Two)

 

American Women Writers

Chair: Donna M. Campbell, Washington State University

 

  1. “`Eyes without Speaking Confess the Secrets of the Heart:’ Edith Wharton and Louisa May Alcott,” Debra Ryals, Pensacola State College
  2. “The Artist’s Dilemma in Cather’s ‘Coming Aphrodite!” Tracienne Ravita, Georgia State University
  3. “`In Praise of Quiet Stories’: The Dramatic Impetus of Kindness in Wendell Berry and Sarah Orne Jewett,” Matthew Forsythe, Rollins College

 

 

 

 

Session 5-C 4:00-5:20 (Scarborough Three)

 

New Approaches to the Short Story

Chair: Dustin Anderson, Georgia Southern University

 

  1. “Pedagogy and the Short Story,” Brianne Jaquette, College of the Bahamas
  2. “Teaching Styles in Short Stories: Using Carver’s ‘A Small Good Thing’ and Faulkner’s ‘Barn Burning’ as Examples,” Suocai Su, City College of Chicago
  3. “`Creatures of Habit’: The Role of Habits in Short Story Character Creation,” Thomas W. Howard, Jackson College

 

 

Session 5-D 4:00-5:20 (Scarborough Four)

 

New Views of American Stories

Chair: Olivia Edenfield, Georgia Southern University

 

  1. “Gothic Origins of the American Short Story: Irving, Poe, Hawthorne,”

Alfred             Bendixen, Princeton University

  1. “Why Dansie and Josie Sleep: Imagining Death in African American Stories,”

Emily DeHaven, University of Kentucky

  1. “The Representations of the Deceased in `Spunk’ by Zora Neale Hurston and `Clarence and the Dead (And What Do they Tell You Clarence? And the Dead Speak to Clarence)’ by Randall Kenan,” Sharon Lynette Jones, Wright State    University

 

 

 

Session 5-E 4:00-5:20 (Savannah)

 

New Readings of Short Fiction

Chair: Lee Clark Mitchell, Princeton University

 

  1. “Urban Space and Political Agency in Alice Dunbar-Nelson’s ‘The Pearl in the Oyster,” Sidonia Serafini, University of Georgia
  2. “Gothic Projections of Madness and Racial Inferiority: The Perils of Hyper- Rationality in “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “Benito Cereno,”

John Gruesser, Kean University

  1.  “Diagnoses of Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies,” Bradley Edwards,

Georgia Southern University

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Special Event: Reception

5:30-7:00

(Windows)

Keynote Address:

  1. Gerald Kennedy

“National Strangeness in the

Antebellum Tale”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Saturday, October 22, 2016

 

 

Registration: 8:00-8:40 a.m.

(Scarborough Foyer)

 

Session 6-A: 8:40-10:00 (Scarborough One)

Contemporary Short Stories

Chair: Robert Clark, College of Coastal Georgia

 

  1. “Metaphysics, Positivism, and the Truth of Fiction: Rebecca Goldstein’s ‘Legacy of Raizel Kaidish’,” Emily Budick, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

2 “Chuck Palahniuk’s Living Dead: Generation Me’s ‘Zombies’ in the Age of   Depression,” Patrick Osborne, Florida State University

  1. “The Worst and Best Short Story John Updike Ever Wrote,” James W. Thomas, Pepperdine University

 

Session 6-B: 8:40-10:00 (Scarborough Two)

 

New Approaches to F. Scott Fitzgerald: Reinventing the Canonical,

            Recovering the Popular

Chair: Kirk Curnutt, Troy University

 

  1. “Can’t Buy Me Love: Commodification and Redemption in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s ‘The Popular Girl’ (1922),” Farrah R. Senn, Brewton-Parker College
  2. “‘Absolution’ (1924) and Transnational Identities,” Dustin Anderson, Georgia Southern University
  3. “Visualizing ‘The Rich Boy’ (1925): F. Scott Fitzgerald, F. R. Gruger, and Red Book Magazine,” Jennifer Nolan, North Carolina State Universit

 

Session 6-C: 8:40-10:00 (Scarborough Three)

 

New Forms of Short Fiction

Chair: Bradley Edwards, Georgia Southern University

 

  1. “Morphing Genres: Novels in Flash and Flash Cycles,” Jennifer J. Smith, Franklin College
  2. “Speculative Fiction: Back in the Beginning of the End of the World with Junot Diaz’s `Monstro’,” Christiane E. Farnan, Siena College
  3. “Decentered Narratives and Fantastic Otherness in Kelly Link’s Postmodern American Fairy Tales,” Andrew M. Hakim, Princeton University

 

 

Session 6-D: 8:40-10:00 (Scarborough Four)

Women, God, and Violence in the Short Fiction of Andre Dubus

Chair: James Meredith, Colorado State University, Global

  1. “Saving Maid Marian: Southern Chivalry in the Short Fiction of Andre Dubus,”   Olivia Carr Edenfield, Georgia Southern University                                            2. “The Theological Implications of Andre Dubus’s ‘A Father’s Story’,”                                        Patrick Samway, S.J., St. Joseph’s University                                                          3. “Opening Sentences, Eruptive Violence, in Dancing after Hours,” Lee Clark Mitchell, Princeton University

Session 7-A: 10:10-11:30 (Scarborough One)

 

American Women Writers and the Short Story

Chair: Donna Campbell, Washington State University

 

  1. “The Echo of the Inner Voice: How Women Writers Pioneered the Interior Monologue in the Short Story Form,” Sara Rutkoski, City University of New York
  2. “Dorothy Canfield Fisher’s Hillsboro People: Feminist Short Story and Founding Vermont State,” Ceillie Clark-Keane, Northeastern University
  3. “The Revolutionary Short Story: Sandra Cisneros’s Woman Hollering Creek,” Sonia Alvarez Wilson, Catawba College

 

 

Session 7-B: 10:10-11:30 (Scarborough Two)

 

New Considerations

Chair: Bradley Edwards, Georgia Southern University

 

  1.  “Peter Taylor: Supernatural Presences in the Late Stories,” David M. Robinson, Oregon State University
  2. “Doctor Martino’s Other Stories: Unity and Cohesion in These 14,” Kirk Curnutt, Troy University
  3. “Humor and Horror in Two Stories of the Holocaust by Nathan Englander,” Frank G. Novak, Pepperdine University

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Session 7-C: 10:10-11:30 (Scarborough Three)

Nineteenth-Century Issues

Chair: John Wharton Lowe, University of Georgia

 

  1. “Maternal Morality and Mourning: Womanhood in Rebecca Harding Davis’s Civil War Fiction,” Paula Rawlins, University of Georgia
  2. “The National ‘Abortive Romance’ in ‘Ethan Brand’,” Allan Benn, East Stroudsburg University
  3. “Reading the Animals: Faulkner’s Expansion of Melville’s Epistemological Expedition into the Wilderness,” Elizabeth H. Swails, University of Georgia

 

 

Session 7-D:  10:10-11:30 (Scarborough Four)

 

Hemingway’s Short Fiction

Chair: Steven Florczyk, Longwood University

 

  1. “The Ebro River Valley in ‘Hills Like White Elephants’,” Marie Mullins,

Pepperdine University

  1. “Adaptation, Extrapolation, and Hemingway’s ‘The Killers’,” Lesa Carnes Shaul, University of West Alabama
  2. “”Pauline Pfeiffer’s Safari Journal as a Source for Hemingway’s `The Snows of Kilimanjaro’,” Dennis B. Ledden, Independent Scholar

 

 

Session 8-A: 11:40-12:50 (Scarborough One)

 

American Modernism

Chair: Matthew Forsythe, Rollins College

 

  1. “The Complex Design of Sherwood Anderson’s ‘Hands’,” Richard Kopley, Pennsylvania State University
  2. “Race, Phenomenology, and O’Connor’s Short Fiction,” Ben Mangrum,

Davidson College

  1. “Reversed Gender Roles and Prostitution in Fitzgerald’s ‘Head and Shoulders’,” Paul Blom, Independent Scholar

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Session 8-B: 11:40-12:50 (Scarborough Two)

 

Women Characters in the Short Story

Chair: Nicole Camastra, University of Georgia

 

  1. “Lauren Groff’s ‘Ghosts and Empties’ and the Literary Paradigm of the Walking Woman,” Nina Bannett, New York City College of Technology
  2. “The Medical is Social: Reexamining Retrospective Diagnosis in ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’,” Emily Banks, Emory University
  3. “Homosexual Avoidance and the Destruction of the Female in Poe’s ‘The Black Cat’,” Urshela Wiggins Atkins, Polk State College

 

Session 8-C: 11:40-12:50 (Scarborough Three)

 

Perspectives from the Savannah College of Art and Design

Chair: Weihua Zhang, Savannah College of Art and Design

 

  1. “Shattering the Literal: Flannery O’Connor’s Violent Intention,” Mary Aswell Doll, Savannah College of Art and Design
  2. “Sexual Identities in Yiyun Li’s A Thousand Years of Good Prayers,” Mary Chi-Whi Kim, Savannah College of Art and Design
  3. “Voices of Real People: Stories of Chinese Immigrants in Ha Jin’s A Good Fall, Weihua Zhang, Savannah College of Art and Design

 

 

Session 8-D: 11:40-12:50 (Scarborough Four)

 

New Explorations

Chair: Kirk Curnutt, Troy University

 

  1. “Trauma, the Missing, and Fractured Lives in Luis Camacho Ruiz’s Barefoot Dogs,” Rob Luscher, University of Nebraska, Kearney
  2. “Relational Autonomy in the Short Story Cycle,” Helena Kadmos,

Murdoch University (Australia)

  1. “Romances of Reunion in the Short Fiction of Bret Harte,” Tara Penry, Boise State University

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Special Event: Luncheon: 1:00-2:10 (Windows)

Speakers:

Dante James, The African-American Film Series

Richard Layman, The Short Story Project

 

Session 9-A: 2:20-3:50 (Scarborough One)

Early Twentieth Century

Chair: John Wharton Lowe, University of Georgia

 

  1. “Good Instincts in Jack London’s ‘South of the Slot’,” Kenneth Brandt, Savannah College of Art and Design
  2. “Dreiser’s Cinematic Modernism: ‘Victory’ as Precursor to Citizen Kane,”

Roark Mulligan, Christopher Newport University

  1. “Edith Wharton’s Suspense Theater: Naturalism and Gothic Modernism in the 1920s Stories,” Donna M. Campbell, Washington State University

 

 

 

Session 9-B: 2:20-3:50 (Scarborough Two)

 

Hemingway and the Art of the Short-Story Cycle

Chair: Robert Clark, College of Coastal Georgia

 

  1. “Hemingway’s Modernist Manifesto: In Our Time and the Short-Story Cycle Genre,”,” Steven Florczyk, Longwood University
  2. “’The war was always there’: Men Without Women as a Short-Story Cycle,”

            Brad McDuffie, Nyack College

  1. “Music and the ‘Persevering Traveler’: Winner Take Nothing as a Modernist

Short-Story Cycle,” Nicole Camastra, University of Georgia

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Session 9-C: 2:20-3:50 (Scarborough Three)

 

Approaches to Contemporary Stories

Chair: Megan Flanery, Georgia Southern University

 

  1. “The Southern Stories of Ron Rash,” Lisa Abney, Northwestern State University
  2. “One Thousand Dozen Marketable Goods: An Historical Critique of a Lesser Known Jack London Short Story,” Terrence Cole, University of Alaska Fairbanks
  3. “The Street Carnival: Recurrent Motifs in Cisnero’s The House on Mango Street,” Lacey B. Rogers, University of Nebraska Kearney

 

Session 9-D: 2:20-3:50 (Scarborough Four)

 

New Considerations of the Story Form

Chair: Bradley Edwards, Georgia Southern University

 

  1. “The Expansion of the Genre: From the Story Cycle to Microfiction,”

Oliver Scheiding, University of Mainz (Germany)

  1. “Rhapsody and Requiem: The Influence of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf on the Short Stories of Raymond Carver,” Josh Temples, Georgia Southern University
  2. “An Unlikely ‘Patriot’: Reconsidering the Short Fiction of Meridel Le Sueur,”

Lisa Kirby, Collin College

 

Session 10-A: 4:00-5:20 (Scarborough One)

 

Studies in Modernism

Chair: Bradley Edwards, Georgia Southern University

 

  1. “F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Later Saturday Evening Post Stories: Finding the Quirks of New Plot Lines in 1929,” Nancy VanArsdale, East Stroudsburg University
  2. “Who Needs Masculinity?” Margaret Bockting, North Carolina Central University
  3. “The Stories of Dashiell Hammett,” Richard Layman, Publisher, Columbia, SC

 

Session 10-B: 4:00-5:20 (Scarborough Two)

Flannery O’Connor and Bret Harte

Chair: Matthew Forsythe, Rollins College

 

  1. “Nietzsche Went Down to Georgia: Existential Anxiety in O’Connor’s ‘A Good Man Is Hard to Find’,” David Polanski, Independent Scholar
  2. “Adrian Tomine’s Killing and Dying and the Minimalist American Graphic Short Story,” Robert Clark, College of Coastal Georgia
  3. “Romances of Reunion in the Short Fiction of Bret Harte,” Tara Penry,

Boise State University

 

 

Session 10-C: 4:00-5:20 (Scarborough Three)

 

American Realism

Chair: Lee Clark Mitchell, Princeton University

 

  1. “How Stephen Crane Revolutionized Naturalism with the Short Story,” Jeremy K. Locke, University of Tennessee
  2. “What is `Pace’ in Stephen Crane’s `The Pace of Youth’,” Brian Gingrich, Princeton University
  3.  “Reading New Orleans Stories,” James Nagel, University of Georgia

 

 

 

 

 

 

Closing Reception 5:30-7:00

 

(Windows)

 

Special Event

 

A Reading of Original Short Stories by SSASS Members

 

Chair: Robert Clark, College of Coastal Georgia

 

  1. Kirk Curnutt, Troy University
  2. Richard Kopley, Pennsylvania State University
  3. Jennifer Memolo, Clarkson College

 

 

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ENSFR conference 2016 programme

‘The Child of the Century’: Reading and Writing Short Fiction Across Media

Edge Hill University, UK

 

 

Day 1, Friday 13th May 2016

 

TIME SESSION VENUE
8.30 – 9.00 Registration & Refreshments Business School Foyer
9.00 – 9.30 Welcome address B001
9.30 – 11.00 Parallel Sessions: Panels 1 & 2
Panel 1: Form, Format and Short Story Publishing B002
Narrative Empathetic Writing Devices: A Study of Short Fiction Formatting.

Amanda Bigler (Loughborough University, UK)

Embracing Modes: How the children of this century have employed the online publisher.

Lisa Blower (independent scholar, UK)

Does the Short Story exist?

George Green (Lancaster University, UK)

 
Panel 2: The short story on film B003
Altered States: Narrator and Audience Adaptations of Helen Simpson’s Short Stories.

Ingrid Cuypers (KU Leuven, Belgium)

Narration and Commemoration in the Story and the Film A Rose for Emily.

Esin Korkut (Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey)

Updating the Past: Thomas Hardy’s Wessex Tales on Film.

Lukas Lammers (Friedrich‐Alexander-Universität Erlangen‐Nürnberg, Germany)

 
11.00 – 11.15 Break & Refreshments Business School Foyer & Atrium
11.15 – 12.45 Parallel Sessions: Panels 3 & 4
Panel 3: Innovation, Technology and Genre B002
A new detective method: The Adventures of Richard Marsh’s Female Detective Judith Lee in the Strand Magazine, 1911-16.

Minna Vuohelainen (Edge Hill University, UK)

Haunting a mean house in a dull street: Time and Technology in the ghost stories of Edith Wharton and Elizabeth Bowen.

Emma Liggins (Manchester Metropolitan University, UK)

Revealing as Concealing: The Flash of the Epiphany Moment in the Modernist Short Story.

Sophia Kier-Byfield (University of Aarhus, Denmark)
  Panel 4: Reading, Writing, Teaching B003
Seeing and Not-Seeing the Short Story.

Anna Metcalfe (University of East Anglia, UK)

No time to be lost: Short stories as a compass in a changing world.

Philippa Holloway (Edge Hill University, UK)

With suspicious intent: Teaching the pleasures of Short Fiction.

Kerry Myler (Newman University, UK)

 
12.45 – 13.45 Lunch Business School Foyer & Atrium
13.45 – 14.45 ENSFR committee meeting
14.45 – 16.15 Parallel Sessions: Panels 5 & 6
Panel 5: The Short Story and Cinematic Form B002
Textual Portraits of Self and Other: Ruth Prawer Jhabvala’s ‘A Lovesong for India’.

Karen D’Souza (Edge Hill University, UK)

Beyond Cinema: Daphne du Maurier’s Intermedial Experiments in her Short Stories.

Christine Reynier (Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier, France)

The Spiritual Automaton: Cinematic Precursors in Steven Millhauser’s Short Fiction.

Simon Stevenson (University Centre Doncaster, UK)

 
  Panel 6: Twitter Fiction B003
Tweeting Short Stories: Jennifer Egan’s ‘Black Box’ and David Mitchell’s ‘The Right Sort’.

Elke D’hoker (University of Leuven, Belgium)

Curating Conclusions: Collaborative Twitter Fiction and the implied author.

Emma Segar (Edge Hill University, UK)

Short but not fleeting: Lydia Davis can teach us how to live (and tweet).

Julie Tanner (Independent scholar, UK)
16.15 – 16.30 Break & Refreshments Business School Foyer & Atrium
16.30 – 18.00 Short Story Readings (programme to follow) B001
18.00 Day 1 Close

 

 


 

‘The Child of the Century’:

Reading and Writing Short Fiction Across Media

 

Day 2, Saturday 14th May 2016

 

TIME SESSION VENUE
8.30 – 9.00 Refreshments Business School Foyer
9.00 – 9.30 Welcome B001
9.30 – 11.00 Parallel Sessions: Panels 7 & 8
Panel 7 : Flash, Hybridity, Cycles and Transformation B002
From Blog to Book and Back: Éric Chevillard’s Migrating Microfictions.

Erika Fülöp (Lancaster University, UK)

Transcultural and Transmedial Stories and Identities in Short Story Cycles: Tom Cho’s Look Who’s Morphing and Ali Alizadeh’s Transactions.

Manuela Zehnter (University of Bonn, Germany)

Hemingway, Twitterature and the Places of Indeterminacy – Discussion of Problems of Interpretation and the Position of the Reader in the World of Flash Fiction.

Roksana Zgierska (University of Gdansk, Poland)

 
  Panel 8: Art and Technology B003
We are Cyborgs: Technology in Hari Kunzru’s Short Fiction.

Bettina Jansen (TU Dresden, Germany)

Visionary Inner Spaces in J. G. Ballard’s Vermilion Sands.

C. Bruna Mancini (Università della Calabria, Italy)

Coherence and Counterpoint: Music in the Short Stories of James Joyce and Kazuo Ishiguro.

Thomas Gurke (Heinrich-Heine-University, Düsseldorf, Germany)

 
11.00 – 11.15 Break Business School Foyer & Atrium
11.15 – 12.45 Parallel Sessions: Panels 9 & 10
  Panel 9: Hybrid Forms B002
Adrian Tomine’s Visual Storytelling in Killing and Dying.

Mercedes Peñalba (University of Salamanca, Spain)

Intermedial synergy in Angela Carter’s short fiction.

Michelle Ryan-Sautour (Université d’Angers, France)

Generic Hybridisation in Janice Galloway’s “Scenes” from Blood (1991).

Jorge Sacido-Romero (University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain)

 

 
  Panel 10: Publishing 1: Authorship and Adaptation B003
Dis/honesty and risk in collaborative short fiction.

Micaela Maftei and Laura Tansley (University of Victoria, Canada and University of Glasgow, UK)

Narrative Brevity Across the Media: Rhetoric and Form.

Miłosz Wojtyna (University of Gdańsk, Poland)

 
12.45 – 14.00 Lunch Business School Foyer & Atrium
14.00 – 15.00 Nicholas Royle Reading and Questions B001
15.00 – 15.15 Break & Refreshments Business School Foyer & Atrium
15.15 – 16.45 Parallel Sessions: Panels 11 & 12
  Panel 11: Publishing 2: Excerpts and Anthologies B002
Cutting a Long Story Short or the Art of Excerpting the Right Passage: Richard Ford’s The Lay of the Land in the New Yorker.

Gerald Preher (Lille Catholic University, France)

Arriving, Settling, Moving on: Stories of Belonging and Displacement.

Eleonora Rao (University of Salerno, Italy)

The Construction of Gender in Hermione Lee’s Short Story Anthology The Secret Self.

Aleix Tura Vecino (University of Stirling, UK)

 
  Panel 12: Mysterious Visions B003
Mystification by Landscape: Margaret Atwood and the Group of Seven.

Dr Susan Poznar (Arkansas Tech University, USA)

Short Fiction and Theology: Foundational Myths and Marian Iconography in Michèle Roberts’s ‘Annunciation’.

Laura Lojo-Rodríguez (Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, Spain)

 
16.45 – 17.00 Closing Remarks B001
17.00 Day 2 Close

 

Please note, programme subject to change.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This event is supported by Edge Hill University’s Institute for Creative Enterprise:

www.edgehill.ac.uk/ice

@edgehillice

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Thresholds International Short Fiction Feature Writing Competition

 

http://blogs.chi.ac.uk/shortstoryforum/features-competition/

FREE ENTRY
750 to 2,000 words.
£500 first prize, plus 2x runner-up prizes £100 each
Deadline: 06 March 2016, 11:59pm (GMT).
Calling for feature essays on the short story form, either recommending a short story, collection or anthology, or profiling the life and writing of a short story writer. We look, above all, at the quality of prose, the insights offered, and your ability to really hook your readers. The focus must be on the short story form (short stories, though, are not eligible for entry).

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Call for Papers The American Short Story: An Expansion of the Genre

Society for the Study of the American Short Story

 Call for Papers

 The American Short Story: An Expansion of the Genre

 A Symposium of the American Literature Association

The Society for the Study of the American Short Story (SSASS) requests proposals for papers and presentations at an international symposium on the short story to be held in Savannah, October 20-22, 2016, at the Hyatt Hotel. More information regarding hotel reservations, keynote speakers, and registrations details will be available in the spring of 2016 and will be posted on the new Society website:

americanshortstory.org.

Continue reading “Call for Papers The American Short Story: An Expansion of the Genre”

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ENSFR conference deadline for proposals

‘The Child of the Century’: Reading and Writing Short Fiction Across Media
Edge Hill University, UK, May 13-14, 2016: deadline for proposals extended to January 31st 2016.

Writing in 1936, Elizabeth Bowen said: ‘The short story is a young art; as we now know it, it is the child of this century. Poetic tautness and clarity are so essential to it that it may be said to stand at the edge of prose; in its use of action it is nearer to drama than to the novel. The cinema, itself busy with a technique, is of the same generation; in the last thirty years the two arts have been accelerating together.’

The child of the 20th century is still growing and developing in the 21st century, alongside an equally rapid acceleration in new media. Through discussions, presentations and performances, this conference will explore the generic affinities between short fiction and other art forms; intermedial transformations; and migrations of the form. This includes the impact of changing technologies on its writing and transmission, historically and at the present moment. Proposals are welcome from both critics and practitioners.

Topics include (but are not limited to) the following:

Short fiction as electronic literature; hypertext, twitter fiction and interactive short fiction
The short story, print and magazine culture
Short fiction and film
Short fiction and theatre
Short fiction and the visual arts, e.g. painting, photography, illustration
Short fiction and music
Short fiction and poetry
Graphic fiction
Short fiction in performance
Adaptation and hybridity
Short fiction authors working across media
Technology and form in short fiction
Short fiction, radio and podcast
New forms of transmission
Short fiction and social media
Digital research in short fiction

300-word abstracts for 20-minute papers should be sent to coxa@edgehill.ac.uk no later than midnight on the 31st of January 2016. Contributors should also send a short biographical note indicating institutional affiliation. It is envisaged that conference proceedings will be published as a special issue of the peer-reviewed journal Short Fiction in Theory and Practice:
http://www.intellectbooks.co.uk/journals/view-Journal,id=196/

Edge Hill University is located in North West England, within easy reach of Liverpool. http://www.edgehill.ac.uk/.

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Katherine Mansfield and the Art of the Short Story Bandol, France, 10-12 June 2016

Conference organised by the Katherine Mansfield Society Hosted by the town of Bandol, France Supported by the New Zealand Embassy, Paris and the University of Northampton, UK

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS Professor Enda Duffy University of California, Santa Barbara, USA Professor Ailsa Cox Edge Hill University, UK

CALL FOR ABSTRACTS This international conference celebrates the centenary of Katherine Mansfield’s visit to Bandol, where ‘The Aloe’ (the first draft of ‘Prelude’), was completed, Jan-March 1916. The genesis of this story bears witness to Mansfield’s development as a modernist writer, with her everyday subject matter and privileging of modernity, her focus on small, seemingly insignificant details at the expense of comprehensive description, her preference for the vignette which provides the reader with only fleeting glimpses of people and places, and her preoccupation with colour and her emphasis on surfaces and reflections. Her employment of multiple, shifting perspectives which are both subjective and fractured also displays an affinity with Impressionism, as does the attention she pays to the ephemeral effects of artificial and natural light, weather effects, and seasonal changes. Like painting in watercolours, short story writing may seem a deceptively easy task for those who have not attempted it, and this goes part way to explain the dismissive tone taken by so many critics towards the genre.

H. E. Bates was an early-twentieth-century critic who understood this difficulty: ‘[t]he short story is the most difficult and exacting of all prose forms; it must not be allowed to foster the illusion […] that its very brevity makes it easy to do’. Clare Hanson makes the claim that the short story has often been the ‘chosen form of the exile […] who longs to return to a home country which is denied him/her’, Mansfield’s work being an obvious example of this tenet. Even today, the short story is perceived to be a lesser genre, contributing to the view held by some critics of Mansfield as a minor writer. Yet, the development of her own particular free indirect discourse form of writing, linking it to literary impressionism, culminated in her position as one of the most important early exponents of the modernist short story. Her techniques include the use of symbolism and humour; themes incorporate violence, war, death, childbirth, relationships – especially in marriage – together with feminist and sexual issues. Suggested topics for papers might include:

• The modernist short story • KM as practitioner of the short story genre • KM’s development as a short story writer • KM in the South of France • KM as commentator on the short story • KM and her legacy to the short story form • Literary influences on KM as a short story writer • Artistic and musical influences on KM as a short story writer • KM, the short story and the marketplace • Reception of KM as a short story writer

Abstracts of 200 words, together with a short bio-sketch, should be sent to the conference organisers: Dr Gerri Kimber, University of Northampton, UK Professor Janet Wilson, University of Northampton, UK at kms@katherinemansfieldsociety.org Submission deadline: 31 March 2016.

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Adaptation Conference, Lille 2016: Call for Papers

Adaptation, Revision, Translation: From Life to Art, from the Page to Stage and Screen

June 17-18, 2016 at Lille Catholic University

Reflecting upon the new edition of her Theory of Adaptation published in 2013, Linda Hutcheon feels that the first version of her study only looked at adaptation “in terms of repetition with variation.” She now sees “new forms and platforms” and wonders “where to draw the line at what we call an adaptation?” In an endeavour to fuel the body of work already available on adaptation theory, this conference means to explore a variety of avenues. Contributors are welcome to work on textual manipulations: short stories being turned into novels, the use of myth, legends and of the epic tradition in children’s books or “original rewritings” such as Michael Cunningham’s The Hours (1998).

History or real crime finding their way into fiction or film also have their place here, whether in detective fiction classics like F. Tennyson Jesse’s A Pin to See the Peepshow (1934) or glamorous historical bestsellers like Philippa Gregory’s The Other Boleyn Girl (2001). As Linda Seger points out, “adaptation is a transition, a conversion, from one medium to another. All original material will put up a fight, as if it were saying ‘take me as I am’.” How novelists and screenwriters resist that temptation and engage in the necessary reconceptualising in order to create a storyline and a work of art is an essential part of our subject.

It will also be interesting to reflect, in a more traditional way, on adaptations of fiction into film and, in a less conventional way, on fiction that derives from film. We shall thus see in what ways Kamilla Elliott’s comments in Rethinking the Novel/Film Debate can be taken further for, according to her, “if art draws from real life, then an art adapting another art is one step further away from real life as a representation of a representation.” Other points of entry would be to dive into the relationship between plays and musicals (My Fair Lady being the classic example of the genre) or from a story or event to painting, sculpture or graphic art. As Hutcheon’s study suggests, adaptation is interactive in that it enables “the knowing audience” to envisage “adaptation as adaptation.” The remakes of famous films – re-adaptations – such as The Great Gatsby could lead to discussions on revision as a means of introducing the young public to classics. Other forms of adaptation such as fan fiction or new translations of famous works could also be taken into consideration. The word “adaptation” will thus be understood in a broad sense, making interdisciplinary approaches possible.

Abstracts of about 500 words should be sent to Suzanne Bray (suzanne.bray@univ-catholille.fr) and Gérald Préher (gerald.preher@univ-catholille.fr) before January 15, 2016 along with a short biographical note.

Academic panel: Suzanne Bray (Lille Catholic University), Cindy Hamilton (Liverpool Hope University), Jacqui Miller (Liverpool Hope University), Gérald Préher (Lille Catholic University)