Eudora Welty Society

The Eudora Welty Society awarded Rebecca Mark the 2009-2010 Phoenix Award at the American Literature Association meeting in May 2010. The Phoenix Award is a biennial award presented for distinguished achievement in Eudora Welty Scholarship. Mark's contributions to Welty scholarship have been significant with numerous essays published along with her groundbreaking 1995 book, The Dragon's Blood: Feminist Intertextuality in Eudora Welty's The Golden Apples. In addition to her contributions as a scholar, Mark has been an active member of the Eudora Welty Society, serving as vice president and president from 2002-2006.

Adrienne Akins was awarded the 2011 Eudora Welty Graduate Student Award for travel to the American Literature Association (ALA), which will be held in Boston this year, May 26-29. The Eudora Welty Society recently set panels for ALA and made plans for the annual Eudora Welty Society business meeting, all of which will be held on Thursday, time and place to be announced. The Society will also plan a social event that day.

"Glamorous Scoundrels, Vaunting Heroes, Protective Fathers, Wandering Lovers: Masculinity in Eudora Welty's Fiction"; Organized by the Eudora Welty Society

Chair: Harriet Pollack, Bucknell University

1. 1. "Man, Machine, and Metaphor in 'Death of a Traveling Salesman,'" Paula Elyseu Mesquita, University of Lisbon Center for English Studies

2. 2. "Rereading Welty Misreading Faulkner: Character Prototype, Sanctuary, and The Robber Bridegroom," Pat Bradley, Middle Tennessee State University

3. 3. "Red Heads and Real Deltans: Black Men and White Masculinity in Delta Wedding," Jean Griffith, Wichita State University

4. 4. "Gentlemen in Spring," Noel Polk, Mississippi State University

"Violence in Eudora Welty's Fiction"; Organized by the Eudora Welty Society

Chair: David McWhirter, Texas A&M University

1. 1. "The Death of Mothers: Shamanic Violence in Eudora Welty's Delta Wedding," Martina Sciolino, University of Southern Mississippi

2. 2. "'Now what did you want to tell that for?': Violence and Silencing in Losing Battles," Adrienne Akins, Baylor University

3. 3. "Interrogating Rape in Welty's Fiction: 'The Burning,'" Harriet Pollack, Bucknell University

The Eudora Welty Society is joining with the Robert Penn Warren Society for two panels at the November 4-6, 2011, South Atlantic Modern Language Association meeting in Atlanta with the following call for papers: "Influence and Exchange: The Connected Worlds of Eudora Welty and Robert Penn Warren." Eudora Welty and Robert Penn Warren enjoyed a lengthy association in the landscape of twentieth-century southern letters. Beginning as Welty's editor and critic during his time with the Southern Review, Warren and Welty developed a literary friendship that significantly impacted each other's writing. This panel, a joint venture with the Robert Penn Warren Circle, seeks to investigate the multifaceted connections, complexities, and cross-fertilizations between the writing of Welty and Warren. Possible presentations might consider the intertextual engagement of Welty's "A Still Moment" with Warren's review "Love and Separateness" and his own addressing of the subject in "Audubon: A Vision"; their treatment of similar themes and/or issues such as history, region, race, and gender; as well as common spiritual and mythical undercurrents in their writing that speak to the complexities, beauty, and tragedy of the human condition and the connectedness of life and truth in art. By May 15, 2011, please submit 500-word abstracts to Victoria Bryan, University of Mississippi, at victoria.m.bryan@gmail.com.

The Eudora Welty Society also announces the annual Ruth Vande Kieft Award for the best essay on Welty by a beginning scholar. The prize carries with it an award of $150 and publication in the Eudora Welty Review. Please see the call for papers elsewhere in this issue of EWR and on the Eudora Welty Society website eudoraweltysociety.org.

Eudora Welty scholars and readers are invited to join the Eudora Welty Society for just $10 for two years (eudoraweltysociety.org/membership. html) in support of continuing Welty's legacy as one of the finest writers of twentieth-century America. The biannual newsletter of the society will be emailed to members this spring.