Conferences and Calls for Papers*

(DE)FAMILIARIZING WOOLSON

Sixth Biennial Conference
Rensselaerville/Cooperstown, New York
October 28 - 31, 2004

Keynote Speaker: Judith Fetterley

Papers welcome on Constance Fenimore Woolson and the broader topic of literary inheritance and authorial legacy. Essays are invited that investigate any aspect of the familial or cultural coordinates intersecting the emerging American literary traditions of the past two centuries. Possible areas of interest include life writing and other genres, transnational connections, the arts, material culture, literary production, and the publishing industry in which Woolson participated. Especially encouraged are papers that address Woolson's familial and literary ties to the Coopers.

A $200 prize will be awarded to the most outstanding Graduate Student Essay contributing to Woolson scholarship.

Please send one page abstracts by May 1, 2004 to:

Sharon Kennedy-Nolle, President
The Constance Fenimore Woolson Society
sknolle2002@yahoo.com

Forum on "Senses of the Past"

Submissions are invited for a Fall 2004 Forum on "Senses of the Past." Contributions may address any aspect of the topic, including:

• Spectres, ghosts, graveyards, graves, monuments, memorials, ruins
• Relics, fragments, traces
• Memory, nostalgia
• Repetition, Time-travel
• Age, aging; childhood
• History
• The past; Excavating the past
• Historical events
• Fiction as history, fiction vs. history, historical fiction
• Theories, uses of history in James
• James as an historical figure
• History of James criticism
• History of James's writings, texts
• Literary history
• Historical influences on James
• James as historical influence
• James family legacies

Contributions should be submitted in duplicate and produced according to MLA style. Please enclose return postage with your manuscript. One-page proposals or short (10-12 pages) essays should be sent by March 1, 2004 to:

Susan M. Griffin, Editor
Henry James Review
Department of English
University of Louisville
Louisville, KY 40292
USA
E-mail: HJAMESR@LOUISVILLE.EDU
FAX: 502-852-4182

Henry James Society Midwest Modern Language Association Annual Meeting
November 4-7, 2004
Hyatt Regency St. Louis, St. Louis, MO

Possessing James

Explorations of Jamesian possession, dispossession, and self-possession from any period or genre. Thematic, figural, psychoanalytic, and historical investigations welcomed. Inquiries and one-page abstracts to Larry Shillock (Lshillock@wilson.edu) by 15 April 2004.

Theoryanalysis: Henry James and New Formalisms
Call for Proposals

Long discredited as a conservative, parochial, and even "oppressive" critical practice, "close reading" is showing signs of return. Yet this return is marked by considerable anxiety: conference speakers apologize in advance for their indulgence in close reading; "formalism" is referred to questions of the social and the political; critics disagree about the legacy of the New Criticism; questions arise about the exact location of "formalism" in style, structure, syntax, or other domains connoted by "form."

In what sense are New Formalisms new? In what ways might they return to the New Criticism yet discern its limitations? What are the protocols of new formalism in the wake of the analytic projects of deconstruction and queer theory? Is the return to formalist practice inflected in any way by the new historicism, or other academic movements that its return sets out to resist? In the work of close reading, what is the precise relation between the adjective and the gerund? How, finally, might one conceptualize the chiastic relation between theory and analysis?

These questions are necessarily of considerable (i.e., life-long) interest to Jamesians. If Jamesians engage with obscurity, silence, complex syntax, recessive subjects, can reading ever not be "close?" How might one construct a genealogy of Jamesian criticism that tracks the fate of close reading?

In order to grapple with these (and other) questions about the function of Jamesian criticism at the present time, Sheila Teahan and Eric Savoy are organizing a workshop-conference on "Henry James and New Formalisms" to be held at Université de Montréal in mid-May 2004. This "workshop-conference" will be conducted as a seminar, limited to about twenty participants, and held over three days; participants will be asked not--or at least not primarily--to read a conventional conference paper, but rather to work between conceptualization and demonstration. (Think of it, perhaps, as the class you always wanted.) We intend to publish a collection of papers arising from the conference.

Please submit proposals by September 1, 2003, to both organizers. E-mail submissions are encouraged. Queries are most welcome.
Eric Savoy: eric.savoy@umontreal.ca Sheila Teahan: teahan@msu.edu

Call for papers, 2004 ALA Conference, May 27-30, San Francisco

1. Jamesian Imprints: Fiction. Papers on authors (Anglo-American and beyond) whose fiction strongly engages James or who have written significant criticism on James (e.g., Roth, Ellison, Byatt, Ozick, etc.). 2-page abstracts by 15 December 2003; Eric Haralson (eric.haralson@verizon.net).
2. Jamesian Imprints: Poetry. Papers on poets (Anglo-American and beyond) whose work is demonstrably in dialogue with James or who have written significant criticism on James (e.g., Moore, Auden, Berryman, Merrill, etc.). 2-page abstracts by 15 December 2003; Eric Haralson (eric.haralson@verizon.net).

Call for papers, 20th Century Literature Conference, University of Louisville, 26-28 February 2004

Papers addressing conference theme -- "When is post modernism?" (e.g., questions of literary periodization, narrative time, language/style/signification, high/low art) -- on the basis of any post-1900 James in any genre. 2-page abstracts by 1 September 2003; Eric Haralson (eric.haralson@verizon.net).

Leon Edel Prize

The Leon Edel Prize will be awarded for the best essay on Henry James by a beginning scholar. The prize carries with it an award of $150, and the prize-winning essay will be published in HJR. The competition is open to applicants who have not held a full-time academic appointment for more than four years. Independent scholars and graduate students are encouraged to apply. Essays should be 20-30 pages (including notes), original, and not under submission elsewhere or previously published. Please follow regular HJR guidelines as to format, and identify essays as submissions for the Leon Edel Prize. A brief curriculum vitae should be included. Deadline: November 1, 2003.--SMG

Teaching James

In Fall 1996, HJR published a special forum issue on "Teaching James" in order to open the journal to conversation on the ways in which we teach James. Readers' responses to that issue indicate that the many HJR readers who are teachers of James would like to continue discussing pedagogies. To that end, HJR will now accept submissions of short essays on teaching James. Such essays will undergo HJR's normal, refereed submission process and, if accepted, be published in regular issues of the journal. HJR's primary function will continue to be, of course, the publication of scholarly and critical work on Henry James. Essays on pedagogy will simply become an added, occasional feature of the journal that allows us to explore the ways in which teaching and scholarship nourish one another. I will be happy to consult with authors about potential submissions.

Susan M. Griffin, Editor
The Henry James Review
Department of English
University of Louisville
Louisville, KY 40292

E-mail: hjamesr@louisville.edu
Tel.: 502-852-4671
Fax: 502-852-4182

See also Guidelines for Contributors.