Posts

Posted on

CFP 4th ENSFR conference: “Objects of Desire” – Lille Catholic University, 24-26 May 2018

The fourth ENSFR conference will take place in Lille, France. Proposals are invited (in French or English) that explore the relation between short fiction and desire across different periods and genres, including flash fiction, the novella and short story cycles. As a concentrated and intense form of prose writing, short fiction lends itself very well to representations of desire. As Sarah Hall says, “The form is very good at unzipping the mind’s fly.” Think of Katherine Mansfield’s “Bliss” (1918): “For the first time in her life Bertha Young desired her husband;”or of J. G. Ballard’s “The Subliminal Man” (1963), where hypnotic techniques of advertising turn the desire for consumer items into an irresistible compulsion. The short story form itself may be driven by desire as a structuring principle, the desire for instance of the reader to explore its gaps and mysteries. In Towards the End (1985), for instance, John Gerlach suggests that closure may be an object of desire. Several critics have analysed desire and its objects in the novel. Peter Brooks speaks of “a dynamics of desire animating narrative and the construal of its meanings”, René Girard’s concept of “mimetic desire” suggests that a human instinct for imitation is what drives people. Do these ideas also apply to the short story or do desire and the short story interact in a different way?Literature, religion and art began with objects of desire and have never abandoned the theme. From Helen of Troy and the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden via Novalis’s blue flower to the throne of Westeros, numerous examples spring immediately to mind, and if the ten commandments tell people not to covet anything that belongs to their neighbours, this surely implies that they are highly likely to do just that.

Although we expect most proposals to be individual, panel proposals of three closely related papers will also be considered. Proposals (250-300 words) should be sent to gerald.preher@univ-catholille.fr and suzanne.bray@univ-catholille.fr by 15th December 2017.

 

 

 

 

Posted on

CFP: Twentieth-Century British Periodicals: Words and Art on the Printed Page, 1900-1999

Twentieth-Century British Periodicals: Words and Art on the Printed Page, 1900-1999

4 July 2017

Museum of English Rural Life, University of Reading, Redlands Road, Reading, UK

Current scholarship on twentieth-century periodicals is moving beyond the study of the ‘little’ magazine and avant-garde publications. Many mainstream and specialist periodicals, including tabloids, broadsheets, illustrated newspapers, illustrated magazines, fashion magazines, ‘slick’ magazines, women’s magazines, art periodicals, trade and specialist periodicals, pulps, reviews, and political and campaigning magazines have yet to receive sustained critical attention.

This interdisciplinary one-day * conference, coordinated by Dr Kate Macdonald, University of Reading, and Emma West, Cardiff University, will bring together scholars and collectors to discuss the magazines, newspapers, journals, dailies, weeklies, fortnightlies, monthlies and quarterlies of British cultural life in the pre-Internet twentieth century. The focus of the discussion will be on the producers and consumers of these ephemeral products, to attempt to map out their networks. By focusing on both words and images, this conference aims to bring the specialist collector and the art historian to the table, to share knowledge of commercial and artistic figures and movements with publishing and book historians.

We invite abstracts relating to these topics:

  • publishers
  • editors
  • illustrators
  • photographers
  • graphic design, art direction, advertising and publicity
  • columnists
  • magazine fiction
  • the sporting pages
  • the children’s comic and the teen magazine
  • fashions on the page
  • monthly domestic instruction
  • freelance writing
  • the reviewer and the reviews
  • ephemerality and collectability
  • pre- and post-war periodicals
  • the bibliographers and the academy

Please send abstracts of 300 words or less, plus a brief account of your teaching, publications or research in these fields, by 31 January 2017, to k.macdonald@reading.ac.uk.

* If enough abstracts are received to warrant a second day, we will extend the conference to 5 July.

Posted on

The Fifth Biennial John Updike Society Conference

The Fifth Biennial John Updike Society Conference

Faculty of Philology, University of Belgrade, Serbia – June 1 – 4, 2018

THE FIRST CALL FOR PAPERS

The Fifth Biennial John Updike Society Conference will be the first one outside the United States of America, and it will take place in Serbia. John Updike visited Belgrade in 1978—it was then the capital of Yugoslavia and now it is the capital of Serbia. Updike also visited Zagreb, the capital of Croatia, which was then one of the six constitutive republics of Yugoslavia. In both cities Updike gave important interviews for magazines and TV stations.

Papers on any aspect of John Updike’s work or life will be considered, but topics that are especially appropriate can be found on the society’s website: http://blogs.iwu.edu/johnupdikesociety. One-page proposals for 15- to 20-minute papers on all aspects of Updike’s life and work and especially suggested topics should be sent, along with a brief one- or two-paragraph bio, to conference director Biljana Dojčinović – jus5thconference@gmail.com – by the 31st of January 2018.

Posted on

CFP The American Short Story: New Horizons – Mainz – 5-7 October 2017

The American Short Story: New Horizons

Johannes Gutenberg-University, Mainz, Germany

October 5-7, 2017

 Program coordinator: Oliver Scheiding

 Organizing Committee: James Nagel, Olivia Edenfield, Elke D’hoker, Jochen Achilles, Dustin Anderson, Damien Schlarb

Throughout its history, the American short story has been praised either as a highly polished gem or condemned as literary fast food. Despite such rise-and-fall predictions, the short story has always been a demanding form. Its narrative economy in terms of time and space records decisive, intimate moments of life that give the American Short Story a broad social resonance. As such, the short story offers a vibrant field of research. There is a renaissance in progress not only in terms of the short story’s productivity but also in terms of innovative theoretical questions. The current state of research is, however, probably best described as “ripening.”

The conference “The American Short Story: New Horizons” invites both panels and papers that address fresh and original questions relevant to studying the American short story: how the genre works as performance in itself; how it conveys a theory of culture in which aesthetic structures and the presentation of cultural problematics interrelate; how the short story and the practices of text-making are related to the cultures of print in which textual circulation and economic exchange are homologues; how we can read the short story as an expressive form alongside its material dimensions, its vitality of forms (i.e., short-short fiction, flash fiction), and the multiple meanings of such concepts as authorship and genre; how we can reassess the short story as a field to map out exchanges not just among authors, but also among editors, publishers, reviewers, readers, and the physical text, with its advertisements, illustrations, and editorial changes. The conference thus seeks to explore the American short story as a coming together of the enduring narrative practice of compression and concision in American literature, presently culminating in a digital culture in which brevity rules.

Suggested Topics:

  • History of the American Short Story
  • American Short Story and Ethnicity
  • Gender/Sexuality Studies and the American Short Story
  • American Short Story and Literary/Cultural Theory
  • American Short Story and Linguistics
  • American Short Story and Psychology
  • American Short Story and Religion
  • Early Short Narratives prior to 1800
  • American Short Story and Periodicals
  • American Short Story and Graphic Narratives
  • American Short Story and Print Culture/Material Culture
  • American Short Story and Translation/Translators
  • American Short Story and Storytelling
  • New and old Forms: Short and Short-Short Stories
  • American Short Story Cycles
  • The American Short Story and Life Writing
  • American Short Stories and Authors
  • Flash Fiction and Microfiction
  • American Short Story and Visual Arts/Film
  • American Short Story and Digital Research
  • American Short Story and the Digital Age
  • American Short Stories and Globalization
  • American Short Stories and Transnationalism
  • American Short Stories and Medical Humanities
  • American Short Story and Literary Periodization/Movements
  • American Short Story and MFA Programs
  • American Short Story and Music/Theater
  • Editing and Anthologizing the American Short Story
  • Publishing and Reception of the American Short Story
  • American Short Story and Pedagogy
  • American Short Story and Genres (Novel, Novella, Essay etc.)
  • New Literary Histories on American Short Stories (1980s to the Present)

Please submit all proposals and abstracts to Oliver Scheiding (scheiding@uni-mainz.de) by June 30, 2017.

  •  The organizing committee screens all proposals and abstracts, issues acceptances, and arranges the presentations on the program.  It will form panels to accommodate papers not included in pre-arranged groups.
  • All persons wishing to give a paper at the conference, including all members of pre-arranged panels, should give a one-paragraph abstract of the paper to be presented along with a biographical paragraph giving the credentials of the presenter to address this topic. Individual papers should be scheduled for 20 minutes.
  • Panels and roundtables have three presenters, although some may have more. Proposals for pre-arranged panels should include a 250-300-word description of the topic and full contact information for all members of the group. The person submitting the proposal is the chair of the session. He or she may also be a presenter, but need not be.
Posted on

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).

Posted on

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