Tag: American short story

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Short Fiction in Theory and Practice 12.2

Vol. 12.2 , the second of two special issues on ‘the health of the short story’ guest-edited by Lucy Dawes Durneen is now available.  Lucy’s editorial
‘Breaking ourselves open: Recovery and survival in the short form’  reflects on the process of editing and arranging articles that speak to and across the individual issues, and the way in which this itself mirrors the short story’s trifold ability to diagnose, observe and potentially suture together resolutions for the challenges of the human condition, both within the boundaries of the text, and as a discrete tool for personal recovery.

Other articles discuss pandemic literature; medical short stories in the 1890s; the early 20th century US writer Fanny Hurst; monstrous motherhood in Renaissance short fiction; and running writing workshops for health workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. There are creative contributions from Moy McCrory, Virginia Hartley and the Chilean author Carolina Brown, who is also in conversation with Lucy Dawes Durneen. Plus book reviews on the modern short story and magazine culture and the German short story by  Aleix Tura Vecino and Livi Michael.

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Call for Contributors: Handbook of the Short Story

We are editing a Handbook of the Short Story in the World for Brill as part of the series Handbooks of Literary and Cultural Studies, and we are looking for chapters on some specific topics (see below).  We are well aware that the chapters are broad in their scope. Some of these chapters should have a comparativist approach that covers several countries. For that reason, we are looking for potential contributors who have expertise in the field to write a synthetical approach to the topic while at the same time being analytical in the discussion of concrete short stories. Ideally a chapter should offer an overview of the topic, and then discuss three or four authors and/ or stories.

The volume is aimed at non-specialist scholars and graduate (or otherwise advanced) students in literature and cultural studies and it offers balanced accounts, not axe-grinding or reckoning of grievances with other scholars. The chapters aim to provide full balanced accounts at an advanced undergraduate and graduate level, as well as a synthesis of debate, past and current methodologies, and the state of scholarship.  As editors, we are seeking purpose-written contributions, book chapters, between 6,000 and 8,000 words, aiming to explain what sources there are, what methodologies and approaches are appropriate in dealing with them, what issues arise and how they have been treated, indicating also the room for disagreement. In conclusion the chapter must be a guide to the graduate student approaching the material for the first time (focused not marginal, orienting, providing contextual information, pointing out leading or provocative questions).

Contributors should send an abstract (300 – 500 words) and a brief CV to both editors by March 15th 2022. Confirmation of acceptance by April 15th 2022. Final versions should be submitted in December 2022.

If you have any query, please do not hesitate to email us.

Santiago Rodríguez Guerrero-Strachan (University of Valladolid) guerrero@fyl.uva.es and  José Ramón Ibáñez Ibáñez (University of Almería) jibanez@ual.es

List of units to cover:

Theoretical approaches

The short story: from the Press to the Digital Age

The Folk Tale

The Fantastic/ Horror/ Gothic Short Fiction

The Science Fiction Short Story

History of Short Fiction

The Rise of the Modern Short Story: Poe, Hawthorne, ETA Hoffmann, J.P. Kleist, N. Gogol, Sir Walter Scott

The Realist Short Story: S. Crane, Henry James, G. Flaubert, G. Maupassant, I. Turgenev, T. Hardy, M. Twain, A. Chekhov

Fin-de-siècle Short Story: Gérard de Nerval, R. Kipling, R. L. Stevenson

The Modernist Short Story: James Joyce, V. Woolf, E. Hemingway, W. Faulkner, F.S. Fitzgerald, K. Mansfield, J. Conrad, Ford Maddox Ford

The Diasporic Short Story: Jhumpa Lahiri, Ha Jin, Sefi Atta, Ben Okri

Regions of the Short Story

The Hispanic and Francophone Caribbean Short Story: A. Carpentier, G. García Márquez, S. Ramírez, Marvel Moreno

The Río de la Plata Short Story: J. L. Borges and J. Cortázar

The North American Short Story in Spanish: J.J. Arreola and A. Monterroso

The Spanish Short Story: G.A. Bécquer, E. Pardo Bazán, I. Aldecoa, C. Fernández Cubas

Ethnic Fiction: M. Hong Kingston, H. M. Viramontes, Louise Erdrich

The Anglo-Indian Short Story: M. Raj Anard, R.K. Narajan and Raja Rao.

The Southeast Asian Short Story

The Arabic Short Story

The Short Story in German: F. Kafka, T. Mann, T. Bernhard

Eastern Europe Short Fiction: Sholom Aleichem, Shalom Asch, I. Bashevis Singer, I. Babel

The East Asian Short Story

The Israeli Short Story

LIST OF CHAPTERS:

Theoretical approaches: The short story: from the Press to the Digital Age

The Folk Tale

The Fantastic/ Horror/ Gothic Short Fiction

The Science Fiction Short Story

History of Short Fiction:

The Rise of the Modern Short Story.

The Realist Short Story.

Fin-de-siècle Short Story.

The Modernist Short Story.

The Diasporic Short Story.

Ethnic Short Fiction.

Regions of the Short Story:

The Hispanic and Francophone Caribbean Short Story.

The Río de la Plata Short Story.

The North American Short Story in Spanish.

The Spanish Short Story.

The Anglo-Indian Short Story.

The Arabic Short Story.

The Israeli Short Story.

The Short Story in German.

Eastern European Short Fiction.

The Southeast Asian Short Story.

The East Asian Short Story.

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CFP: American short story writers and the American short story as cultural institution

The following call for papers has been selected by the organisers of the 53rd annual Congress of the French Association for American Studies, which will take place at the University of Bordeaux (Michel Montaigne) from 31st May to the 3rd June, 2022. The theme of the congress is “Legitimacy, Authority, Canons”.

American short story writers and the American short story as cultural institution

Maurice Cronin, (University Paris Dauphine)

The short story holds a paradoxical institutional and cultural status in the United States, where it has, by turns, been exalted as the ‘national art form’ and relegated to the role of poor relation to the novel. Since the 1890s, when Brander Matthews designated the “short-story” as a genre in its own right, quite distinct from, and implicitly superior to, the novel, seen as the canonical form of European fiction—a designation that Andrew Levy has described as “an informal declaration of independence from … cultural subservience to European literature” (Levy, 34)—the short story has frequently been accorded an exceptional place in U.S. culture. This is partly attributable to institutional factors specific to the country. The establishment of a modern Anglo-American literary canon to rival the classical canon was a key element in the endeavor to legitimize modern English departments emerging in the early twentieth century in the US. Establishing an American literary tradition was an important part of that endeavor throughout the first half of the century, and the designation of the short story as candidate for the role of “national art form” a notable feature of it (Levy 84).

The genre’s candidacy was subsequently bolstered by the appearance of the New Critical anthology-text books, such as Brooks and Warren’s influential Understanding Fiction (1943, 1959), which gave the short story an important role in high-school and college literature pedagogy, and the emergence of the first creative writing graduate programs, in which the short story was almost immediately adopted as the apprentice genre for aspiring writers of fiction. In the U.S. today, the short story is associated with prestige publications like the New Yorker, and is more than ever at the heart of creative writing pedagogy in graduate workshop programmes. And yet, despite this strong institutional presence—or perhaps even because of it—the short story still gives the impression of a genre caught up in a perpetual quest for legitimacy. This is precisely what makes it a rich subject for exploring the related questions of legitimacy, authority and canons in American studies. The genre’s paradoxical status is attributable partly to the nature of the institutions that have been instrumental to its development in the U.S., and partly to the specific nature of the question of legitimacy in the literary domain more generally. As Patrick Charaudeau shows, legitimacy can generally be defined as a form of social recognition that is always, in some way or another, institutional in nature and origin (Charaudeau, 3). In a sense, literature is itself an institution in the usual sense of the term, but it is also a strange, paradoxically “institutionless institution”, as Jacques Derrida puts it, insofar as “in principle” it “allows one say everything, in every way” (Derrida, 42, 36). As such, what is thereby ‘instituted’ is literary authors’ freedom “to break free of rules, displace them” (37). As a field, then, literature is a relatively weakly institutionalized one. Literary texts do not emerge in a situation in which the rules or norms governing their emission and reception are entirely pre-defined once and for all. As such, they must reflexively negotiate their own emergence, and as it were, legitimize themselves. It follows from this that in the literary domain there is always a potential tension between legitimacy, understood as a form of institutional recognition or sanction, and authority, which in this case must always have a more or less pronounced “charismatic” dimension, insofar as its source is not socially or institutionally visible. This tension between legitimacy and authority is especially relevant to the position of short story writers in the United States precisely because the short story is a genre in which the mediating role of the institutional structures crucial to its development is particularly visible, whether it be in the form of magazine or anthology editors, anthology text books or creative writing workshops. As such institutional factors do not merely surround works, but affect them in their very structure and “content”, this workshop seeks to explore the question of how writers in the U.S. negotiate and renegotiate them within their works. All approaches that help us understand how, since the post-war era, short story writers have managed to construct distinctive literary identities and gain canonical status in a so-called minor genre that has been so heavily institutionalized are welcome.

This question of authors’ negotiation and renegotiation of the cultural and institutional status of the genre is, of course, not just a textual matter. Mode of publication is a particularly crucial institutional factor that all short story writers have to contend with. As Bruno Montfort has argued, what truly distinguishes the short story from the novel is that the former is almost always published alongside other texts. Unlike the novel, its “verbal unit” (the text) very rarely overlaps with its “material unit of publication”, i.e. the book (Montfort 158, my translation). In a culture in which the single-author book still very much remains the prestige publication format for fiction, short stories and short story writers always potentially suffer from a deficit of legitimacy and cultural authority. Given that prior publication in magazines and journals is more than ever a pre-requisite for short-story writers to gain subsequent access to publication in more prestigious formats, contributions that deal with short story writers’ relations with magazine editors—through, for example, examination of author-editor correspondence—are of obvious relevance to this workshop.

The publication of single-author collections would appear to represent a form of consecration for short story writers. Yet whether re-publication of magazine-published stories in single-author collections offers a solution to the deficit of legitimacy and authority that short-story writers have to contend with is moot. Bruno Montfort points out, for instance, that the authority of such collections is more often than not quite restricted, an argument supported by the fact that, to a far greater extent than novels, they are subject to being “dismembered” (Montfort, 165, my translation) and subsequently republished in different formats. The chequered publication history of short story collections in the United States, even those of canonical writers like Hemingway and Faulkner, lends credence to this view. Yet the short story collection as a genre continues to enjoy a degree of presence and cultural prestige in the US today that is unrivalled in most other national literatures. Furthermore, one might wonder whether re-publication of magazine-published stories in single-author collections constitutes a re-assertion of writers’ authority over their texts. Proposals that involve comparative analyses of magazine and book-collection versions of authors’ stories would offer an interesting way of exploring this question.

Re-publication of their stories in short story anthologies may also represent a form of consecration for short story writers. National anthologies are frequently designed to ‘reflect’ a national tradition, or the cultural and social concerns proper to a nation, but in reality they are also instrumental in shaping the traditions they purport to reflect. Editorial selections, and the introductions or prefaces that usually present and justify them to readers, help shape or change readers’ conception of the genre and play an important role in the on-going process of canon formation. The short story anthology genre is no exception, but it has not as yet received the critical attention it undoubtedly deserves (D’hoker, 115). As the tradition of inviting short story writers to edit short story anthologies is very much alive today in the US, contributions that study the prefaces and editorial choices of such anthologies would add to our understanding of the role writers themselves have played in (re)shaping the canon and the short story as a genre.

The roles writers have played as anthology editors show, if it were necessary, that the relationship between writers and the institutions of the literary field is often a symbiotic one. U.S. writers’ widespread involvement as instructors or former students in university creative writing workshops provides further evidence of this. Mark McGurl claims to show that the presence of the workshop system is “everywhere visible … like a watermark” in post-war US prose fiction, manifesting itself most characteristically in the new forms of institutional self-reflexivity that he detects in the texts of novelists and short-story writers of the so-called “program era” (McGurl, 4). However, McGurl’s work is not focused specifically on the short story, and his account of the institutional effects of the workshop system on the genre and on the practice of short story writers is necessarily patchy. Contributions that either build on McGurl’s approach, or pay greater attention than he does to the shaping effects that writers themselves have had on the workshop system through their involvement in it would thus also be very welcome.

500-word (max) proposals for 25-minute conference papers related to the above topics, and a short biographical statement, are to be sent to Maurice Cronin (mcecronin@yahoo.fr) no later than 17th January, 2022.

 

Works cited

Brooks, Cleanth, and Robert Penn Warren. Understanding Fiction, 2nd edition, Prentice-Hall, 1959.

Charaudeau, Patrick. “Le charisme comme condition du leadership politique.” Revue Française des Sciences de l’information et de la communication [en ligne] 7, 2015. Web. 17 November 2021.

Derrida, Jacques. “This Strange Institution Called Literature: An Interview with Jacques Derrida.” Acts of Literature. Ed. Derek Attridge. New York: Routledge, 1991. 33-75.

D’hoker, Elke. “The Short Story Anthology.” Ed. Paul Delaney and Adrian Hunter, The Edinburgh Companion to the Short Story in English. Edinburgh UP, 2019. 108-124.

Levy, Andrew. The Culture and Commerce of the American Short Story. Cambridge UP, 1993.

Matthews, Brander. “The Philosophy of the Short-Story.” Short Story Theories. Ed. Charles E. May. Ohio UP, 1976. 52-59

McGurl, Mark. The Program Era and the Rise of Creative Writing. Harvard UP, 2009.

Montfort, Bruno. “La nouvelle et son mode de publication, le cas américain.” Poétique 90, 1992. 153- 171.

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Short Fiction in Theory & Practice 9.2 and call for papers.

Vol. 9.2. of the peer-reviewed journal Short Fiction in Theory and Practice is out now with articles on A.M. Homes, Thomas Harris, Lydia Davies, Samuel Beckett, Carson McCullers, Anton Chekhov and more. Plus Jonathan Crane reflects on realism in his own fiction. Robert M. Luscher on the American short story cycle, Felicity Skelton on Canadian fiction and Sarah Whitehead on Katherine Mansfield and Periodical Culture; and Ailsa Cox interviews Lucy Wood, the Cornish-based author of Diving Belles and The Sing  of the Shore.

We welcome submissions of articles, book reviews, interviews, reports and translations on any aspect of short-story writing.  For more information contact Ailsa Cox at coxa@edgehill.ac.uk.

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International Symposium: The American Short Story Old and New

International Symposium: The American Short Story: Old and New, October 15-17, 2020

Organized by the Department of American Studies, University of Innsbruck, Austria and  the Society for the Study of the American Short Story (SSASS) 

The American Short Story: Old and New
October 15-17, 2020

goldenesdachl 
Photo: Robin Peer
CONFERENCE DIRECTORS

Gudrun M. Grabher
University of Innsbruck / Austria

gudrun.m.grabher@uibk.ac.at

James Nagel
University of Georgia / USA
jnagel@uga.edu

The Department of American Studies at the University of Innsbruck, Austria, and the Society for the Study of the American Short Story (SSASS) invite proposals for papers and presentations at an international symposium to be held in Innsbruck, Austria, October 15-17, 2020. The venue is the Humanities Building of the University of Innsbruck at Innrain 52. Various hotels in Innsbruck within walking distance from the conference venue will offer special conference rates at around € 125,– for double rooms. Breakfast is included in the price. The conference fee is € 160, and it includes two lunches and two receptions. The deadline for submissions is June 15, 2020. All attendees must register for the conference by August 1, 2020. Please register online.


CONTRIBUTIONS

In this symposium, we look forward to discussing the American short story from various perspectives and in a variety of contexts. A central focus will be the reconsideration of the history of the genre through the inclusion of new writers from all racial and ethnic groups, the development of innovative types of stories (flash fiction, micro-fiction, and other forms), and the recovery of fiction published in languages other than English. Close readings of stories by any American author are always appropriate as are broad discussions of historical periods and movements. Audiovisual equipment will be available for the symposium.


ORGANIZATION

The symposium is sponsored by the Department of American Studies at the University of Innsbruck and the Society for the Study of the American Short Story. The directors are Gudrun M. Grabher, Chair of the American Studies Department, and James Nagel, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Georgia.


SUBMISSION

In addition to traditional panels, with three 20-minute papers, the symposium will also hold discussion forums, seminar conversations, and roundtable sessions. Fully-formed panels or discussion groups are especially welcome as are sessions organized by author societies. Creative writers are also invited to present work in progress or to discuss the genre of the short story.

Proposals need be only a single page with one paragraph that describes the subject of the paper and another that gives the credentials of the speaker.

Deadline for submissions is June 15, 2020.

For submissions, please go to the conference website and follow the instructions:
https://webapp.uibk.ac.at/ssass2020/

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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