Volume 42, Issue 1, November 2008

4. GEORGE HANDLEY

George Handley is Professor of Humanities at Brigham Young University where he has taught since 1998. He received his BA in Comparative Literature from Stanford University in 1989 and his MA and PhD in Comparative Literature from UC Berkeley in 1995 and also taught at Northern Arizona University. A scholar of literature of the Americas and of ecocriticism, he is the author of Postslavery Literatures in the Americas (Virginia 2000) and New World Poetics: Nature and the Adamic Imagination in Whitman, Neruda, and Walcott (Georgia 2007) and the co editor of Caribbean Literature and the Environment (Virginia 2006) and America’s Worlds and the World’s Americas (Ottawa 2006). He has published articles on literatures of the US South and the Caribbean in Mississippi Quarterly, Callaloo, American Literature, Global South, and Forum for Modern Language Studies, and in several edited books. He has served on the Executive Board and as Program Chair for the International American Studies Association.

5. LISA HINRICHSEN

Lisa Hinrichsen is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Arkansas where she teaches courses on American literature, African American literature, literary theory, and the literature of the American South. She has contributed essays to the Southern Literary Journal, the Journal of Modern Literature, Essays in Criticism, and Etudes Faulkneriennes, and she is currently finishing a manuscript on the roles trauma, fantasy, and misrecognition play in modern and contemporary southern literature. For the past two years she has worked with the SSSL as the book review editor for H Southern Lit.

6. VALÉRIE LOICHOT

Valérie Loichot is Associate Professor of French at Emory University where she is also an affiliate of Comparative Literature and Latin American and Caribbean Studies. She is the author of Orphan Narratives: The Postplantation Literature of William Faulkner, Édouard Glissant, Toni Morrison, and Saint John
Perse (University of Virginia Press, New World Studies, 2007). She has published numerous essays on Caribbean literature and culture, postcolonial and racial theories, and the Plantation Americas (Guadeloupe, Martinique, San Lucia, Haiti, and the U.S. South) in journals such as Callaloo, Mississipi Quarterly, The Journal of Caribbean Literatures, The French Review, French Cultural Studies, Meridians, The International Journal of Francophone Studies, among others. She is currently writing a book on the poetics and politics of consumption in the Creole Cultures of the Caribbean and Louisiana. She is also completing two essays: one on Lafcadio Hearn and creolization, the other on racial representations of Barack Obama in the French media.

NOTES FROM THE FIELD

SSSL Bibliography

SSSL members might find the following statistics to be of interest:
• the number of visits to the SSSL Bibliography website now averages well over 350,000 per year. • since the SSSL Bibliography went on line in 2003, over a million queries have been entered.
• the number of entries in the SSSL Bibliography totals 21,649.
• currently, 40% of visitors are from outside the United States.

The numbers above indicate that the Bibliography is widely used and is an important source of information for not only scholars of Southern Literature, but also students and general readers.

The SSSL Bibliography Committee is attempting to ensure that our coverage is as complete as possible. If you find gaps in coverage (for example, in the coverage of your own work), then please let us know. If you are willing to write annotations of missing sources, we’d certainly appreciate that as well. You can submit directly through the Bibliography website by clicking on “Want to contribute? Send us your annotations!” located on the home page or via e mail to me at [email protected]

Annotations for the Bibliography can be written in complete sentences or in fragments and should be roughly 3 sentences in length. Direct quotations may be included in the annotation. We ask that all bibliographical information follow MLA Style.

Finally, if you are interested in working on the Bibliography Committee, we also have a couple of openings. I’d be glad to send you additional details about what we do. Just e mail me at the above address.

Mary Weaks Baxter

Chair, SSSL Bibliography Committee

The Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association

The Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association’s Executive Board voted unanimously in October 2008 to grant affiliate member status to the Society for the Study of Southern Literature. Beginning next year, SSSL will sponsor the RMMLA regular session on Southern Literature and will have the option of holding business meetings or other activities at the annual convention. The existing regular session was begun in 2003 as a special topic project by Tara Powell of the University of South Carolina and later approved as a permanent regular session in 2005. The chairmanship has heretofore been passed along by the process of an election held among each year’s panellists, which is the RMMLA tradition. Previous chairs in addition to Tara have included Pamela Washington, Rosalie Murphy Baum, Judy Sneller, and Andrew Leiter.

The 2008 RMMLA regular session, held in Reno on October 9, was organized by Tara and explored
the geographical margins of southern literature, especially the west. Sarah Rose Gleeson White of the University of Sydney presented “Out of Place, Out of Form: William Faulkner, the West, and the Western,” and Robert Brinkmeyer of the University of South Carolina spoke on “Space and Place in the Fiction of

Richard Ford.” Jon Smith of Simon Fraser University talked about his new project, “Canada, the U.S. South, and New World Studies: Broadening the Look Away! Model?”

Randy Jasmine of Dixie State College of Utah, who presented on the session in 2007 and served as Alternate Chair in 2008, will organize the 2009 session to be held October 8 9 in Snowbird, Utah. For information about this session or the RMMLA, see the organization’s website at www.rmmla.org, or email Randy at [email protected]

Faulkner Conference Stimulates a “Return to the Text”

In the steamy heat of a Mississippi summer, academics and Faulknerphiles alike gathered at the University of Mississippi to offer homage to one of the South’s greatest writers. This year’s Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference centered upon the “returns of the text,” a topic that allowed for remarkably varied presentations. A paper by James B. Carothers, “’In Conflict with Itself’: Faulknerian Context,” opened the week’s program, which offered workshops on teaching in addition to art exhibits and guided tours of local landmarks. A literary salon, Faulkner genealogy and dinners highlighting true Southern hospitality rounded off this amazing combination of entertainment and scholarship.

Over the course of the week the conference featured a dazzling array of important figures in Southern Studies including Thadious M. Davis, Ted Atkinson and Arthur F. Kinney. Joining us from “across the pond,” Martyn Bone and Owen Robinson dealt with textual connections to Nella Larsen’s Quicksand and
to Faulkner’s New Orleans sketches. The University of Mississippi’s own Ethel Young Minor offered insight into racial liminality and Taylor Hagood’s analysis of Benjy Compson opened new doors into the workings of textuality. Four days of amazing presentations culminated in a picnic at Rowan Oak and the announcement of the university’s newest archival collection of Faulkner’s correspondence with William Bacher.

The 2009 Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference will take place July 19–23 and will focus on Faulkner and “Mystery.” More information and the Call for Papers can be found on the University of Mississippi’s Division of Outreach and Continuing Education website at www.outreach.olemiss.edu/ events/faulkner/

Tara McLellan

University of Mississippi

Southern Writers/Southern Writing Offers Exciting New Scholarship

Graduate students from across the United States gathered to share their promising new work at this summer’s Southern Writers/Southern Writing Graduate Conference at the University of Mississippi. The two day conference, chaired by Jill Anderson, featured a plenary lecture by John T. Edge, Director of the Southern Foodways Alliance, and offered panels on diverse topics ranging from Ghosts and Grotesques to Southern Memory and Place. Authors William Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor and Zora Neale Hurston

were widely represented in presentations as were more recent writers such as Edwidge Danticat and Willie Morris. At the closing luncheon Matthew R. Vaughn from the University of Tulsa was awarded the prize, generously donated each year by Dr. Colby Kullman, for best paper for his essay, “‘Though Thou Hast Not Thy Bliss’: Failed Seductions in Faulkner’s Early Novels.” The work of every presenter demonstrated incredible new opportunities for Southern Studies scholarship.

The Southern Writers/Southern Writing Conference will celebrate its fifteenth year with an even wider range of offerings, including guest speaker Dr. Scott Romine, author of The Narrative Forms of Southern Community and The Real South: Southern Narrative in the Age of Cultural Reproduction. The conference will take place July 16–18, 2009, just before the annual Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference. For more information, please email [email protected]

Tara McLella

University of Mississippi

Richard Wright Centenary

Sherita L. Johnson, Ph.D. University of Southern Mississippi

This year marks the Centennial Celebration of Richard Wright’s birth. All year, all around the world, conferences and programs have been hosted in his honor. In the state of Mississippi, we have held numerous events for our “native son” in Natchez, Jackson and Hattiesburg. Hopefully after this year, Wright’s works will continue to be taught to younger generations. His fiction, non fiction, poetry, and autobiographical writing can be taught across disciplines and in many English courses. Here is how I have incorporated Richard Wright into three courses this year:

1. Southern Literature Survey

The idea of “the” South and Southern identity depends on how the region’s inhabitants express their southernness and how outsiders view the region too. This course will examine how southern writers from various locations and perspectives construct the South in their literary and political narratives. We will also discuss dominant perceptions of the South in America’s cultural imagination. In doing so, we will read selections from novels, poetry, short stories, speeches, and essays in this survey of southern literature. We may also view important films about the South that will supplement our literary studies.

Required Texts
Suzanne Disheroon Green, ed. Voices of the American South (Pearson, 2005) Erskine Caldwell, Tobacco Road (University of Georgia Press, 1995) Richard Wright, Black Boy (Perennial Classics, 1998)
Natasha Trethewey, Native Guard (Houghton Mifflin, 2007)

Note: Black Boy was taught following a unit on “Dirt and Depression” and “Our South(s) in Perspective” (multi ethnic selections); the goal was to view the development of Southern Literature and allow it to serve as a backdrop for the way in which Wright’s work is contextualized by it.

2. Studies in African American Literature: “Richard Wright, 1908 2008”

This year marks the centennial celebration of Richard Wright, Mississippi’s own “native son.” Wright is an acclaimed author of several novels, short stories, autobiography, and political commentary. This class is designed as an introduction to the life and literature of Richard Wright. Our study will focus on a few selections from his canon. Literary criticism, film, and a variety of other materials will be used to supplement our readings of the primary texts.

Required Texts
Richard Wright, Uncle Tom’s Children (Harper Perennial Classics)
Native Son (Harper Perennial Classics)
“How ‘Bigger’ Was Born” (available on E Reserve)
A Composition Journal (for daily reflection)
Selections from Keneth Kinnamon and Michel Fabre’s Conversations with Richard Wright (1993).

NOTE: This course was a compact introductory upper division course; the students viewed the documentary “Black Boy,” the film version of “Long Black Song” (in comparison to the text), and the 1980s’ version of “Native Son” (outdated but useful for comparative study). Students were encouraged to visit Wright’s hometown in Natchez, MS.

3. Senior Seminar: “Black Autobiography”

Designed as a genre study, this course surveys the development of autobiographical writings by African Americans and black people throughout the diaspora. We will examine the methods and motivations for writing about personal experiences that may also represent the black experiences of a larger, collective body. We will begin reading slave narratives and continue studying other classic works including autobiographies by important historical and literary figures such as Richard Wright, Anne Moody and Malcolm X. Recent best selling memoirs are also included in this course.

NOTE: After discussing the development of the genre, beginning with Equiano’s narrative and Jacobs’ Incidents, we move to a unit on “Mississippi Lives” reading a selection of WPA narratives (in Prayin to Be Set Free), Black Boy, and Anne Moody’s Coming of Age in Mississippi. Here students learn about individual experiences in the state and how location affects identity construction as well as autobiographical writing.

** On September 14 2008, the University of Southern Mississippi hosted a public lecture featuring Julia Wright, which served as a nice capstone to all the centenary activities.

I offer this information to propose ways in which Wright might be incorporated in the curriculum. These are all undergraduate courses but I would one day like to teach a graduate course on “Richard Wright’s World,” looking at his later works, those written in exile, his travel writing, etc. comparing those to his earlier works written while he yet remained a “native son” in the U.S.

CALLS FOR PAPERS

Society for the Study of Southern Literature 2009 American Literature Association Conference CFP
Deadline: December 15, 2008

The Society for the Study of Southern Literature issues a call for papers for two sessions at the 2009 American Literature Association Conference in Boston. The conference will be held May 21–24, 2009, at the Westin–Copley Place. Proposed sessions are described below. Please email abstracts and either a cover letter or 2–page CV by December 15, 2008, to Tara Powell at [email protected], or send hard copies to:

Tara Powell
Institute for Southern Studies
University of South Carolina at Columbia Gambrell Hall 107
Columbia SC 29208.

Emailed submissions preferred. For further information about these sessions or SSSL, please contact Tara Powell, or for information about the conference, consult the ALA website at www. americanliterature.com

Session 1: Southern Literature and
the Environment
“Sense of place” and “closeness to the land” have long been considered two distinct, albeit not unique, characteristics of the regional literature of the American South. Contemporary scholars of southern literature have begun to suggest any particularly agrarian vision of southerners is fast becoming (or in some cases, has always been) a mythology. In
the meantime, among the quickly–growing fields
in literary studies is that of environmental writing,

and the ways in which the regional consciousness
of such southern writers as James Dickey, John Lane, Walker Percy, Janisse Ray, Bland Simpson, and others have informed their visions on the
natural world seem to suggest the opposite. How may environmental and southern studies intersect
to illuminate either southern literature generally
or the question of southern agrarianism in its
many variants specifically? Possible paper topics include: readings of particular southern writers in relation to the environment; “southernness” and its relationship to nature writing and/or other ecocritical work; appropriate creative work; and regional work in relation to currents in American nature and environmental writing in general.

Session 2: Southern Poetry and
the Narrative Impulse
Dave Smith has asserted that there is no contemporary “southern poetry” as such; Jim Applewhite argues southern poetry is distinguished by a paralyzing feeling of emotional submersion; Fred Chappell suggests that southern poems exemplify the power inherent in the “lens of particular place.” Though southern poetry anthologies generally contain substantially less poetry than prose, the South abounds with literature journals, is home to several fine poetry series, and has produced many of the century’s finest poetic voices. Storytelling, the oral tradition, and the narrative impulse are often described as hallmarks
of southern fiction. Is this true of southern poetry as well? Recent collections by Fred Chappell, Michael Chitwood, Andrew Hudgins, Sonia Sanchez, Natasha Trethaway, and others, suggest it might. Possible paper topics include: discussions of particular poetic talents, “southernness” in the field of poetry and

poetry studies, narrative (or lack thereof) in poets associated with the South, and regional work in relation to currents in twentieth–century American poetry generally. Creative work that engages these issues is also welcomed.

Society for the Study of Southern Literature MLA 2009 (Philadelphia; Dec. 27–30, 2009)

1. Music and Writing in the U.S. South

The Society for the Study of Southern Literature seeks proposals for 20–minute papers on the subject of Music and Southern Writing. Proposals welcome on the connections, intersections, and interactions between music and writing in the southern United States. Papers might address the nature of narrative and lyric in southern writing; oral traditions of song and chant; the role of the musician in southern literature; the blues (or jazz) aesthetic in literature; or southern writing and any aspect of musical expression. These suggestions are not meant to be exhaustive—other approaches are welcome. Please send abstracts of 300–500 words, along with any requests for a–v support, to Barbara Ladd ([email protected]) by March 5, 2009. Inquiries welcome.

2. The South and the Sublime

The horrors and cruelties of slavery and genocide; gothic fantasies of unspeakable acts, perverse sexualities, and naked power; the brutalities
and visions of incommensurability produced

by isolation, poverty, ignorance, or religious fanaticism; even the uncanniness of the landscapes against which these things transpire—few things about southern literature and culture have proven

more durable (or more vehemently denied) than
its association with the sublime. True or false, ideological projections or rigorous critiques, these intimations of sublimity continue to proliferate, taking newer or newly worked forms: the totality of global capitalism and what it so impersonally wreaks on southern peoples, places, and things; the dystopian vision of the South as “red America,” perpetually on the tipping point into fascism

or bloodshed. Why are such representations so constant? What do they tell us about the South, and what political valences do they have?

This panel seeks papers that address the changing, contested, but nevertheless persistent association
of the South with different versions of the sublime. Papers that explore both the historical specificity of texts and contexts and the theoretical underpinnings of different sublimes are especially welcomed. Abstracts of 250–500 words, along with any requests for a–v support, due to Thomas Haddox at [email protected] by 5 March.

The Twentieth Anniversary Southern Writers Symposium at Methodist University February 27–28, 2009
Featured Speaker, Lucinda MacKethan

The Southern Writers Symposium is dedicated
to bringing scholars, creative writers, and members of the reading public together for a lively interchange of ideas about southern literature and culture. Consisting of scholarly sessions, readings, talks, panel discussions, and performances, the Symposium is designed to provide a diverse group of registrants with information, ideas, inspiration, and entertainment.

In honor of its twentieth anniversary, the Southern Writers Symposium in 2009 will return to its roots with an emphasis on North Carolina writers. The Symposium will have an open-topic format this year, and there will also be papers presented on various aspects of southern literature. For further information, or to place your name on the mailing list, contact:

Emily Wright
English Dept.
Methodist University 5400 Ramsey Street Fayetteville, NC 28311 910-630-7551 [email protected] or visit our website at www. methodist.edu/sws

North Carolina Literary Review

The North Carolina Literary Review is seeking one or two more paper proposals for a panel on North Carolina Drama at Methodist University’s 20th anniversary Southern Writers Symposium, to be held in Fayetteville, NC, February 27–28, 2009, and to be considered for publication in our 2009

issue, which is featuring North Carolina Drama. Also, for our 2010 issue, featuring Appalachian literature, we are seeking papers on North Carolina writers. Submission deadline: August 1, 2009.

If you have a paper idea for either issue, please contact the editor: Margaret Bauer, at [email protected]

Membership in the North Carolina Literary and Historical Association now includes a subscription

to both the North Carolina Historical Review and
the North Carolina Literary Review. For information about this organization, founded in 1900 and one of the oldest of its kind in the country, go to: http://www. history.ncdcr.gov/affiliates/lit-hist/ lit-hist.htm
Please consider joining “Lit & Hist,” which is committed to its mission of helping to preserve North Carolina’s cultural heritage.

Shenandoah: The Washington And
Lee University Review
Shenandoah: The Washington And Lee University Review is pleased to announce the celebration of
the journal’s 60th anniversary with a special issue centering on the works of Flannery O’Connor. The editor seeks essays, poems, short stories, reviews, photographs and other artwork about, related to or in honor of the fiction and life of O’Connor. Any queries about particular submissions should be directed to [email protected]
Deadline: October 1, 2009
A prize of $1,000 will be awarded to the best O’Connor–related work published in the issue, which is planned for Fall 2010.
Materials should be addressed to:

O’Connor Issue

Shenandoah: The Washington and Lee University Review
Mattingly House
2 Lee Avenue

Washington and Lee University Lexington, VA 24450–2116

SELECTED RECENT SCHOLARSHIP IN SOUTHERN LITERATURE

ARTICLES

Comparatist

Anisimova, Irina. “Masks of Authenticity: Failed Quests for the People in Quicksand by Nella Larsen and The Silver Dove by Andrei Belyi.” Comparatist: Journal of the Southern Comparative Literature Association 32.1 (2008): 175–192.

Mississippi Quarterly

Anderson, Eric Gary. “South to a Red Place: Contemporary American Indian Writing and the Problem of Native/Southern Studies.” Special Issue: American Indian Literatures and Cultures in the South. Mississippi Quarterly 60.1 (2006–7): 5–32.

Benson, Melanie R. “Indian Givers: Reterritorializing the South in Contemporary Native American Literature.” Special Issue: American Indian Literatures and Cultures in the South. Mississippi Quarterly 60.1 (2006–7): 101–28.

de Ramírez, Susan Berry Brill. “Before the South Became the South: Pre–Colonial and Colonial Geographies of Contact in Robert J. Conley’s Cherokee Historical Novels.” Special Issue: American Indian Literatures and Cultures in the South. Mississippi Quarterly 60.1 (2006–7): 179–208.

South Carolina Review

Idol, John. “The Unities in Thomas Wolfe’s ‘The Web of Earth,’ ‘I Have a Thing to Tell You,’ and The Party at Jacks.” South Carolina Review 40.2 (2008): 142–46.

Larsen, Jennifer. “‘Plotting the Benefit of the Human Race’: The Freedmen’s Bureau in John William De Forest’s Miss Ravenel’s Conversion and A Union Officer in the Reconstruction.” South Carolina Review 40.2 (2008): 117–41.

South Central Review

Bundrick, Christopher. “Return of the Repressed: Gothic and Romance in Thomas Nelson Page’s Red Rock”. South Central Review: The Journal of the South Central Modern Language Association 25.2 (2008): 63–79.

The Southern Literary Journal

Bauer, Margaret D. “On Flags and Fraternities: Lessons on Cultural Memory and Historical Amnesia in Charles Chesnutt’s ‘Po’ Sandy.’” The Southern Literary Journal. 40.2 (2008): 70–86.

Donaldson, Susan V. “Telling Forgotten Stories of Slavery in the Postmodern South.” The Southern Literary Journal. 40.2 (2008): 267–83.

Griffen, Larry J. and Peggy G. Hargis. “Surveying Memory: The Past in Black and White.” The Southern Literary Journal. 40.2 (2008): 42–69.

Hinrichsen, Lisa. “‘I can’t believe it was really real’: Violence, Vietnam, and Bringing War Home in Bobbie Ann Mason’s In Country.” The Southern Literary Journal. 40.2 (2008): 232–48.

Metress, Christopher. “Making Civil Rights Harder: Literature, Memory and the Black Freedom Struggle.” The Southern Literary Journal. 40.2 (2008): 138–50.

Salvaggio, Ruth. “Forgetting New Orleans.” The Southern Literary Journal. 40.2 (2008): 305–316.

Shaw, Jonathon Imber. “Evil Empires: Blood Meridian, War in El Salvador, and the Burdens of Omniscience.” The Southern Literary Journal. 40.2 (2008): 138–150.

Williams, Jennifer D. “Jean Toomer’s Cane and the Erotics of Mourning.” The Southern Literary Journal. 40.2 (2008): 87–101.

Southern Quarterly

Abbott, Traci B. “‘A Good Girl Like Nancy’: Willa Cather’s Sapphira and the Slave Girl.” Southern Quarterly 46.1 (2008): 26–45.

Alderman, Derek H “The Politics of Saving the King’s Court: Why We Should Take Elvis Fans Seriously.” Southern Quarterly 46.1 (2008):46–77.

Anderson, Devery S. “A Wallet, a White Woman, and a Whistle: Fact and Fiction in Emmett Till’s Encounter in Money, Mississippi.” Special Issue: The Legacy of Emmett Till. Southern Quarterly 45.4 (2008): 10–21.

Collins, Janelle. “Easing a Country’s Conscience: Little Rock’s Central High School in Film.” Southern Quarterly 46.1 (2008): 78– 90.

Golphin, Vincent F. A. “Emmett Till and the Force
of American Memory.” Special Issue: The Legacy of Emmett Till. Southern Quarterly 45.4 (2008): 125–31.

Kolin, Philip C. (ed. and introd.). “The Legacy of Emmett Till.” Special Issue: The Legacy of Emmett Till. Southern Quarterly: A Journal of the Arts in the South 45.4 (2008): 6–9.

Metress, Christopher. “Truth Be Told: William Bradford Huie’s Emmett Till Cycle.” Special Issue: The Legacy of Emmett Till. Southern Quarterly 45.4 (2008): 48–75.

Piacentino, Ed. “Reconciliation with Family in Alice Walker’s ‘Kindred Spirits.’ Southern Quarterly 46.1 (2008): 91–99.

Russell, David. “A Vision of Reunion: Kate Chopin’s At Fault.” Southern Quarterly 46.1 (2008): 8–25.

Southern Spaces

McCulloch, Christine. “Glimpsing Andalusia in the O’Connor–Hester Letters.” Southern Spaces.
Oct 2008. http://www.southernspaces.org/ contents/2008/mccculloch/la.htm

Romine, Scott. “Mapping Souths.” Southern Spaces. June 2008. http://www.southernspaces.org/ contents/2008/romine/la.htm