American Literature Association A Coalition of Societies Devoted to the of American Authors 26th Annual Conference on American Literature May 21-24, 2015 The Westin Copley Place 10 Huntington Avenue Boston, MA (617) 262-9600 Conference Director Olivia Carr Edenfield, Georgia Southern University Registration Desk (Essex Foyer, Westin): Wednesday, 8:30 pm – 10:00 pm Thursday, 8:00 am – 5:30 pm Friday, 7:30 am – 5:00 pm Saturday, 7:30 am – 3:00 pm Sunday, 8:00 am – 10:30 am Book Exhibits (Staffordshire Room): Thursday, Noon – 5:00 pm Friday, 9:00 am – 5:00 pm Saturday, 9:00 am – 1:00 pm Note: Set up for exhibitors will be Thursday from 8 am Noon
2. “Katherine Dunham’s Island Possessed: Negotiating Personal and National Stereotypes,” Kimberly Banks, Queensborough Community College 3. “Trauma and Catharsis in Lahiri's The Lowland,” Alyssa Devey, Brigham Young University Session 3-G Seminar Discussion: Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Courier 7th Floor) Chair: Susan Belasco, University of Nebraska-Lincoln An open discussion of crucial issues in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. No papers will be read. The emphasis will be on intellectual conversation in an atmosphere of professional fellowship. Session 3-H Haunting Realities: the Naturalist Gothic and American Realism (St. George C 3rd Organizer and Monika Elbert, Montclair State University 1. “The Specter and The Spectator: Rebecca Harding Davis’ ‘The Second Life’ and the Naturalist Gothic,” Alicia Mischa Renfroe, Middle Tennessee State University 2. “Naturalistic Despair, Human Struggle, and the Gothic in Wharton’s Short Fiction,” Gary Totten, North Dakota State University. 3. “The Victim as Vampire: Gothic Naturalism in the White Slave Narrative,” Donna M. Campbell, Washington State University. Session 3-I Wealth and Excess (Essex North Center 3rd Floor) Chair: Brad McDuffie, Nyack College 1. “‘That Stuff Bores Me’: Resistant Consumption and ‘The Culture Industry’ in J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye,” Chad Jewett, University of Connecticut 2. “‘Master of the Universe’: Reagan-Era Material Excess and Sexual License in Tom Wolfe’s The Bonfire of the Vanities,” Patrick S. Lawrence, University of Connecticut 3. “Geniuses in Limbo: Tom Wolfe’s American Dreamers,” Michael Jacobs, Berkeley College 4. “Horatio Alger In and Out of Luck,” Valerie Rohy, University of Vermont Session 3-J Boyhood Perspectives (Parliament 7th Floor) Chair: David Boyd, University of Glasgow 1. “How to Dismantle a Boy: An Alternative Reading of the Masculinities in Junot Díaz’s Work,” Daniela Miranda, Washington State University
Friday May 22, 2015 3:40 – 5:00 pm Session 12-A Melville’s Relations (Essex North East 3rd Floor) Organized by the Melville Society Chair: Elizabeth Duquette, Gettysburg College. 1. “Voided by the Wound: Bare Life and the Kindness of Sharks,” John Levi Barnard, College of Wooster 2. “Allan Melvill's Melancholy: Errant Books, Blocked Mourning,” Neill Matheson, University of Texas, Arlington 3. “The Realism of Moby-Dick, Melville’s Preeminent Romance,” K. L. Evans, Cornell University AV Provided Session 12-B The Politics and Morality of Children’s Literature: From Left to Right (Essex North West 3rd Floor) Organized by the Children’s Literature Society Lauren Byler, California State University, Northridge 1. “Peter Parley and the Problems of Child Citizenship,” Emily Kolf, University of Kentucky 2. “Political Consciousness in Historical Fiction Series for Girls,” Mariko Turk, University of Florida 3. “Political Views: Language, Vision, and Citizenship in Rhode Montijo’s T-t-t-tartamudo,” William Orchard, Queens College, CUNY 4. “The Social Model of Disability and Its Analogues as Moral Key in Novels for Young Adults: Wonder, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, and American Born Chinese,” Martha Satz, Southern Methodist University 5. “Love Triangles and Other Adolescent Politics in Mockingjay and Warriors Don’t Cry,” Lauren Byler, California State University, Northridge 6. “Finding God’s Way: Amelia Johnson’s Clarence and Corrine as a Message of Religious Resistance for African-American Children,” LuElla D’Amico, Whitworth University. 7. “Patriot or Traitor? The Vietnam Antiwar Movement in Children's Fiction,” Deborah Wilson Overstreet, University of Maine, Farmington AV Provided Session 12-C Jack London: Esotericism, Biography, and Accusation (St. George A 3rd Floor) Organized by the Jack London Society
1. “An Excerpt from The Tall Boy, by Bent, a Dramatization of ‘The Lost’ from Kay Boyle’s Smoking Mountain,” Tandy Cronyn, Actress 2. A discussion led by Cronyn, Actress AV Provided Session 12-O Business Meeting: Wharton Society (Adams 7th Floor) Session 12-P Business Meeting: Society for the of the American Short (Defender 7th Floor) Session 12-Q Business Meeting: Lydia Maria Child Society (North Star 7th Floor) Friday May 22, 2015 5:10 – 6:30pm Session 13-A Regionalism and the Legacy of the American Revolution (St. George A 3rd Floor) Organized by: Gretchen Murphy, University of Texas-Austin Leonard von Morzé, University of Massachusetts-Boston 1. “‘To endanger the peace of the Whole’: Postrevolutionary Regionalism, Neo-Tory Sympathy, and ‘A Lady of the State of New-York,’” Duncan Faherty, Queens College and CUNY Graduate Center 2. “Reactionary Insurgencies: the U.S. Revolution in the Southern Partisan Imagination,” John Funchion, University of 3. “Harriet Beecher Stowe, Aaron Burr, and New England Federalism,” Gretchen Murphy, University of Texas-Austin 4. “John Brown’s Boards: From Slave Life in Georgia to Marx,” Michael J. Drexler and Stephanie Scherer, Bucknell University AV Provided Session 13-B Charles Chesnutt and Humor (Essex North East 3rd Floor) Organized by the Charles Chesnutt Society and the American Humor Studies Association Viktor Osinubi, Clark Atlanta University 1. “‘Is That Story True?’: Charles W. Chesnutt, Uncle Julius, and American Innocence,” M.M. Dawley, Boston University 2. “Historical Forgetting and the Problem of Humor in ‘Po' Sandy,’ “Kristina Deonaldo, University of Kentucky 3. “Re-Framing Criminal Humor: Blackface Minstrelsy and Murder in Twain's Pudd'n'head Wilson and Chesnutt's Marrow of Tradition,” Sharon McCoy, University of Georgia AV Provided
1. Ellison’s White Rinehart,” Benjamin E. de la Piedra, Columbia University 2. “A White Black Man: Ellison, Racial Passing, and the ‘Unnoticed Logic of the Democratic Process,’” Wil Norton, Georgetown University 3. “Invisibility and the Groove of History: Dynamic Time, Social Recognition, and Ralph Ellison’s Music Criticism,” Michael Germana, West Virginia University 4. “‘WHAT IS YOUR MOTHER’S NAME?’: The Sound/Source Split and Echoes of Black Female Pain in Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man,” Meina Yates-Richard, Rice University Session 17-K Teaching Roth: A Roundtable (St. George C 3rd Organized by the Philip Roth Society Moderator: Aimee Pozorski, Central Connecticut State University 1. Victoria Aarons, Trinity University 2. Frances Bartkowski, Rutgers University, Newark 3. Maggie McKinley, Harper College 4. Christopher Wilson, University of Wisconsin, Madison Session 17-L Business Meeting: James Baldwin Society Founding Meeting (Helicon 7th Floor) Session 17-M Business Meeting: Research Society for American Periodicals (Essex Center 3rd Floor) Session 17-N Business Meeting: Flannery O’Connor Society (Parliament 7th Floor) Session 17-O Business Meeting: Ernest Hemingway Society (North Star 7th Floor) Saturday May 23, 2015 2:10 – 3:30 pm
Session 19-I Primary Stein II: Returning to the Writing of Gertrude Stein A Roundtable (Essex North Center 3rd Floor) Organized by the Gertrude Society Chair: Janet Boyd, Fairleigh Dickinson University 1. Adam University of British Columbia 2. E.L. McCallum, Michigan State University 3. Rebecca Ariel Porte, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor 4. Sharon Kirsch, Arizona State University 5. Linda Voris, American University Session 19-J The Gothic Ellen Glasgow (Helicon 7th Floor) Organized by the Ellen Glasgow Society Chair: Jill Leroy-Frazier, East Tennessee State University 1. “‘It’s a kind of fate’: Inheritance, Imprisonment, and the Haunted Landscape in Barren Ground,” Peggy Dunn Bailey, Henderson State University 2. “Glasgow, the Gothic, and the Cultural Capital of Feminine Beauty,” Laura Sloan Patterson, Seton Hill University 3. “The Gothic Ellen Glasgow,” Mark A. Graves, Morehead State University Session 19-K Walt Whitman and Social Theory 7th Floor) Organized by the Whitman Studies Association Adam Bradford, Florida Atlantic University 1. “Robert E. Park Reading Walt Whitman: ‘Song of Myself’ as Human Ecology,” Timothy Robbins, University of Iowa 2. “‘The invigoration of the Whitman’s ‘The Sleepers’ and the Political Life of Sleep,” Eric Hengstebeck, Northwestern University 3. “Correlating the Self and En Masse: The Spiritual Matrix of the Bhagavad-Gita in Walt Whitman’s Social Theory,” Kanwar Dinesh Singh, Government College, Himachal Pradesh University Session 19-L MELUS Panel #2: American Multiethnic Writing and Violence (Defender 7th Floor) Organized by MELUS (Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the U.S.) Chair: Lingyan Yang, Indiana University of Pennsylvania 1. “Violent Contradictions: Nativism, Assimilation, and American Individualism in John Rollins Ridge’s Life and Adventures of Joaquin Murieta,” Sunny Yang, Louisiana State University 2. “Stumbling Blocks to Freedom: White Moderates and the Inheritance of Unconscious Racism,” Carolyn Marcille, Buffalo State University 3. “Female Subjectivity, Sexual Violence, and the American Nation: Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye,” Melissa Union County College