Poe Studies Association Updates

From Paul Lewis, PSA President

By the time this note appears, I will have become the immediate past president of the PSA. I need, therefore, to thank the members of the executive committee for working with me over the past two years. During this time, we redesigned, updated, and moved the PSA website; created the new J. Lasley Dameron Award for the best Poe bibliography or edited collection; shored up the Patrick F. Quinn Award fund; and continued to sponsor panels at MLA and ALA. During 2018 the PSA will support the Edgar Allan Poe Spanish Association's first conference and cosponsor the Poe and Hawthorne conference in Kyoto. The next international Poe conference will take place in Boston in 2021, and I hope to be involved in planning this event in the city where Poe was born during a burst of cold weather on January 19, 1809.

From Amy Branam-Armiento, PSA Vice President

On January 6, 2018, a cold, blustery day in New York City, the Poe Studies Association sponsored a panel titled "Poe's Philadelphia Stories" at the MLA convention. The topics included the appeal of "The Gold-Bug" to illustrators, Poe's innovative use of sympathetic ink for his time, an analysis of the subtleties Poe uses in the writing of his terror tales to underscore the unreliability of the narrators, and a case that Dupin may not only be the detective but also the murderer in his tales. At a reception later that evening, Richard Kopley received our inaugural J. Lasley Dameron Award for an outstanding Poe bibliography or essay collection for his "Edgar Allan Poe" in Oxford Bibliographies Online, and Jonathan Tresch accepted the James W Gargano Award for an outstanding article on Poe for "'Matter No More': Edgar Allan Poe and the Paradoxes of Materialism" published in Critical Inquiry.

From Carole Shaffer-Koros, PSA Treasurer

As of January 15, 2018, we have 233 members. Panel presenters and authors of published articles in EAPR should be sure their dues are current. This includes the Kyoto Poe/Hawthorne conference, especially recipients of Susan Tane Travel Awards for the conference.

The current checking account balance is $25,332.59. This includes the following restricted funds: Gargano award: $4,620.40; Quinn award: $2,241.49; Dameron award: $1,250.00. Two of these awards were recently given at MLA, and hence not deducted from the balances. Additionally, the Association holds two CDs: $5,026.07 and $1,066.86. Major expenses since August include a $1,500.00 loan to the Kyoto conference to buy a CD required by the bank to obtain a conference business card. The conference has repaid the loan. We also supported the Spanish Poe Society Valladolid conference with a travel grant of $1,500.00 for Emron Esplin. A separate account for the Susan Tane Travel Fund is invested in cash at Merrill Lynch and totals $30,219.52. Therefore, the current cumulative value of our treasury is $61,645.04. A separate account for the Kyoto conference totals $16,419.35.

Tax-exempt contributions may be made to any award or conference funds by contacting me at ckoros.kean@gmail.com.

From Emron Esplin, PSA Member-at-Large

At the upcoming ALA Conference in San Francisco (May 24–27, 2018), the Poe Studies Association is hosting a panel on "Teaching Poe and the World," chaired by Emron Esplin of Brigham Young University.

1. 1. "Poe in Brazil: Machado de Assis and the Emulation of Poe as a Criticism against Baudelaire's Intermediation," Greicy Pinto Bellin, Centro Universitário Campos de Andrade, Brazil.

2. 2. "Of Ravens and Romanticism: Edgar Allan Poe's Enduring Legacy in American Education and the Juvenile Appropriations of His Poetry and Prose," Jordan Costanza, University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

3. 3. "E. A. Poe, W. A. Schlegel, and Modern Literature: A Transnational/Comparative Approach to Teaching Poe," Stephen Rachman, Michigan State University.

From Cristina Pérez, PSA Member-at-Large

Originally created as a possible MLA panel, "Bodies in Poe and Hawthorne," chaired by Cristina Pérez of Universidad Complutense de Madrid / Harvard University, will be one of the two PSA...