Faulkner's Sexualities

Note on the Conference

xix Note on the Conference The Thirty-fourth Annual Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference sponsored by the University of Mississippi in Oxford took place July 22–26, 2007, with more than a hundred and fifty of the author’s admirers in attendance. Ten presentations on the theme “Faulkner’s Sexualities” are collected as essays in this volume. Brief mention is made here of other conference activities. The program began on Sunday with lectures by Dawn Trouard and Deborah McDowell. Following a buffet supper at the home of Dr. M. B. Howorth Jr. was Mr. Twain, Meet Mr. Faulkner, a dramatic reading written and directed by Roseanna Whitlow of Southeast Missouri State University. Whitlow’s colleagues Patrick Abbott (as Faulkner) and Lester Goodin (as Twain) read passages from the authors’ writings and sayings , and Oxford actor George Kehoe provided commentary. Before the readings, Mayor Richard Howorth welcomed participants to Oxford and conference director Donald M. Kartiganer introduced Jennie Joiner, a University of Kansas graduate student writing a dissertation on marriages in Faulkner’s fiction, as the winner of the 2007 William Faulkner Society Fellowship. The award, which provides graduate student fellowships to the conference, is funded by the Faulkner Society and the Faulkner Journal , as well as donations in memory of John W. Hunt, Faulkner scholar and emeritus professor of literature at Lehigh University. Charles Reagan Wilson, director of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture, presented the twenty-first annual Eudora Welty Awards in Creative Writing. Lauren Klaskala, Emma Richardson’s student at the Mississippi School of Math and Science in Columbus, won first prize, $500, for her poem “Alligators.” Jonathan Hughes, William C. White’s student at Madison Central High School in Madison, won second prize, $250, for his poem “The Father at the Cross.” The late Frances Patterson of Tupelo, a longtime member of the Center Advisory Committee, established and endowed the awards, which are selected through a competition held in high schools throughout Mississippi. John Duvall, Gary Richards, and Michael Zeitlin presented lectures on Monday. The day’s program also included sessions during which Seth Berner, a book dealer from Portland, Maine, talked about “Collecting Faulkner,” focusing on the book jackets and paperback covers that emphasize (or ignore) the sexual content of Faulkner novels; James B. xx n o t e o n t h e c o n f e r e n c e Carothers, Charles A. Peek, Terrell L. Tebbetts, and Theresa M. Towner discussed “Teaching Faulkner”; and David Madden, Michelle Moore, and Gina Patnaik made presentations for the first of three panels featuring short papers selected through an annual call for papers. Registration for panelists was funded in part through an anonymous gift made in honor of Faulkner biographer Joseph Blotner. The day’s activities ended with Colby Kullman moderating the seventh Faulkner Fringe Festival, an open-mike evening at Southside Gallery on the Oxford Square. Guided tours of North Mississippi, the Delta, and Memphis took place on Tuesday, as did an afternoon party at Tyler Place, hosted by Charles Noyes, Sarah and Allie Smith, and Colby Kullman. The day ended with Jaime Harker’s lecture. Wednesday’s program included lectures by Catherine Gunther Kodat, Peter Lurie, and Michael Wainwright; short papers by Joel Dinerstein, Jennie J. Joiner, and Matt Low; and a session during which Elizabeth Nichols Shiver brought together current or former Oxford residents Harter Williams Crutcher, Carl S. Downing, Dr. Byron Gathright, and Mildred Murray Douglass Hopkins to reminisce about Faulkner and his family. Attendees then gathered for the annual picnic at Faulkner’s home, Rowan Oak. Program events on Thursday were “Teaching Faulkner” panels, Caroline Garnier’s lecture, and presentations by Stephen D. Barnes, Kristin Fujie, and Chris Teepe. The conference ended with a party at Off Square Books. Four exhibitions were available throughout the conference. The Department of Archives and Special Collections at the University’s John Davis Williams Library sponsored Men and Women in Faulkner’s World, an exhibition that included first editions of Faulkner’s most evocative works about relationships between men and women and accompanying manuscript pages from the Rowan Oak Papers, as well as several photographs from the Southern Media Archive illustrating the actual men and women living in Lafayette Country during that time. There were also images drawn by Faulkner himself illustrating men and women from The Marionettes, The Scream, and the University of Mississippi yearbooks. The University Museum sponsored an exhibition entitled Faulkner Family Artistic Endeavors, featuring paintings by Maud Falkner and...