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American Literature Association
Boston, May 26-29, 2011
This panel will consider the roles men play in Welty's work. Welty's men are robber bridegrooms, protective fathers, glamorous scoundrels, vaunting heroes, adored rapists, overseers, optimists. What can we say Welty does with male gender identities? How does she construct, revise, parody, adore, queer, or critique the performance of masculinity? What do we learn from looking at men in one or several of her fictions? What do we learn from looking at groupings of her father figures, or of her husbands, her sons or lovers? Is there a relationship between the father we meet in One Writer's Beginnings (that is Eudora's own), the fathers in her "autobiographical" stories, and the general patterns? Which patterns are visible across her work, and over the course of her career? Do the treatments change in time? Do they inform one another? All related topics are welcome. Please send inquiries and statements of intent, as soon as possible, and titled paper proposals of 500 words by December 1, 2010 to Harriet Pollack, Professor, Bucknell University, at pollack@bucknell.edu
American Literature Association
Boston, May 26-29, 2011
Critics have tended to see Welty as lyrical, or humorous, or even serious, but not as somebody who writes about violence. Whether we define violence as domestic, related to war or racial conflict, or simply as the violence of a soul battling the forces of the environment, death, and day to day life, violence sits on the edge or in the coded interior of almost every Welty novel and story. While we have come to understand that Welty was not a bystander to life or politics, we have rarely addressed this central issue of her work. We welcome papers focused on any aspect or manifestation of violence -- historical, social, or psychological -- in Welty's fiction, and/or papers exploring Eudora Welty's relationship to the violence that rocked the foundations of Jackson, Mississippi and raged throughout the world during her lifetime. Please send inquiries and statements of intent, as soon as possible, and titled paper proposals of 500 words by December 15 2010, to David McWhirter, Texas A & M University, mcwhirter@tamu.edu.
Baton Rouge, October 29-31
The Eudora Welty Society invites proposals for its session at the South Central Modern Language Association convention, to be held in Baton Rouge, October 29-31. Papers on any topic are welcome, but especially so are those that engage Welty's life, career, or work in reference to the conference theme, "Displacements/Continuities."
Email inquiries or 500-word abstracts to kordonowy@virginia.edu by 15 March 2009.
Renaissance Atlanta Hotel Downtown Atlanta, GA November 6-8, 2009
Type of Session: Affiliated Group (Eudora Welty Society)
Session Name: Welty: The Intersection of Human Rights and the Female Aesthetic
Chair: Rebecca Harrison, University of West Georgia
Session Secretary: Open
CFP Details: As a WPA Junior Publicity Agent, society column writer, and photographer, Welty was involved in the literal process of documenting the socioeconomic culture of the American South. As such, she bore direct witness to racial injustice, gender inequality, and labor disputes. Her experiences with issues of human rights included her witnessing of the civil unrest of the 1950s and 60s. These experiences as a documentarian with the people and the landscape of the world around her—one she loved but couldn’t fully reconcile—influenced her creative work where she questioned and explored the ramifications of conservative attitudes toward gender, race, and ethnicity. On the 100th anniversary of Eudora Welty’s birth, the Welty Society requests papers on the writing of Eudora Welty in its connection to the question of human rights and/or its use and import in her female, creative aesthetic.
Please send 250-500 word abstracts to Rebecca Harrison rharriso@westga.edu by March 15, 2009