Eudora Welty Society

The Eudora Welty Society holds its annual business meeting in May of each year at the American Literature Association conference, this year in Washington DC. Current officers are President Sarah Ford (Baylor University), Vice President Julia Eichelberger (College of Charleston), and Secretary-Treasurer Michael Kreyling (Vanderbilt University). The society regularly sponsors sessions showcasing Welty scholarship at the ALA, SSSL, SAMLA, and SCMLA meetings. The panels the Welty society sponsored at the 2014 SSSL and ALA meetings follow below.

Society members receive information through the Eudora Welty listserv and are eligible for several prizes and awards. The Phoenix Award is a biennial award presented for distinguished achievement in Welty scholarship. The 2014 winner of this award is Pearl McHaney, author of several volumes on Welty, editor of the Eudora Welty Review, and past-president of the Eudora Welty Society, 2009–2010. McHaney’s volumes on Welty are invaluable tools for readers and critics, providing insight into aspects of Welty’s writing and life and allowing readers to see her photographs and writing with fresh eyes. The society also sponsors a Graduate Student Award for travel to the ALA conference to present a paper on Welty and co-sponsors the Ruth Vande Kieft Prize for the best essay by a beginning scholar. The Vande Kieft prize carries with it an award of $150 and publication in the Eudora Welty Review. The 2014 winning essay is “‘Remember right’: Disenfranchised Grief and the Commemoration of Queer Bodies in Welty’s Fiction and Life,” written by Donnie McMahand and Kevin Murphy and included in this issue of the EWR.

Society for the Study of Southern Literature, Washington DC, March 27–29, 2014

“Other Weltys” [session one]

Chair: Harriet Pollack, Bucknell University

1. 1. “Another Memory: Welty’s Reconceptualization of Joyce’s ‘Araby,’” Alison Graham Bertolini, North Dakota State University

2. 2. “Comparing ‘Big Houses,’ Comparing ‘Souths’: Eudora Welty’s Delta Wedding and Elizabeth Bowen’s The Last September,” Isadora J. Wagner, University of Mississippi

3. 3. “Eudora Welty as American Playwright,” Stephen M. Fuller, Middle Georgia State College

4. 4. “Otherness, Sexuality, and Alternative Public Spheres in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway and Eudora Welty’s ‘June Recital,’” Boosung Kim, Texas A&M University

“Other Weltys” [session two]

Chair: David McWhirter, Texas A&M University

1. 1. “Queer Welty in The Golden Apples,” Ikuko Takeda, Louisiana State University

2. 2. “Blues Welty: Uranus Knockwood and Black Oral Poetry in ‘Powerhouse,’” Jacob Agner, University of Mississippi

3. 3. “Other Weltys, Other Winds,” Julia Eichelberger, College of Charleston

4. 4. “The Late Eudora Welty, Undead,” Harriet Pollack, Bucknell University

American Literature Association, Washington DC, May 22–25, 2014

“Considering Eudora Welty and African American Literature: Lines of Dialogue”

Chair: Harriet Pollack, Bucknell University

1. 1. “Eudora Welty and Langston Hughes: In Search of Blues Form in ‘Powerhouse,’” Jacob Agner, University of Mississippi

2. 2. A Twice Worn Path: Eudora Welty and Sarah E. Wright,” Christin Taylor, University of Maryland

3. 3. “The Waiting Room: Race and Medical Ethics in Works by Ernest Gaines and Eudora Welty,” Adrienne Akins Warfield, Mars Hill College

4. 4. “The Lynched Earth: Landscapes as Buried Histories in Welty’s ‘A Worn Path’ and Morrison’s Home,” Donnie McMahand and Kevin Murphy, West Georgia University

“Extravagant Welty”

Chair: Adrienne Akins Warfield, Mars Hill College

1. 1. “Intimate Friendship and Extravagant Performance: The Correspondence of Eudora Welty and Frank Lyell,” Julia Eichelberger, College of Charleston

2. 2. “‘The bird that flies within your heart’: Race, Nature and Decapitation in Eudora Welty’s ‘A Curtain of Green,’” Cliff Hudder, Lone Star College–Montgomery

3. 3. “And Then He Was a She: A Critical Analysis of Eudora Welty’s ‘The Purple Hat,’” Allison Castle Combs, University of Mississippi

“William Faulkner and Eudora Welty”

Chair: Deborah Clarke, Arizona State University

1. 1. “Whiteness Reading Race: Welty’s ‘The Demonstrators’ as a Response to Faulkner’s ‘That Evening Sun,’” Harriet Pollack, Bucknell University

2. 2. “Staircase to the Gothic: William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! and Eudora Welty’s Delta Wedding,” Sarah Ford, Baylor University

3. 3. “Welty, Faulkner, and the Nexus between Segregation and White Southern Womanhood,” Susan Donaldson, College of William and Mary