THE ASSOCIATION OF LITERARY SCHOLARS AND CRITICS'
FOURTEENTH ANNUAL CONFERENCE
Sheraton Society Hill Hotel, Philadelphia, PA, October 24-26, 2008

ALSC Reissues CFPs for Three Seminars

Posted on behalf of John Talbot, ALSC Conference Committee Chairman, and Michael Gouin-Hart, Executive Director, ALSC

The Association of Literary Scholars and Critics (ALSC) is re-issuing the calls for papers for three seminars scheduled to take place at the 2008 ALSC Conference in Philadelphia, October 24-26: “Editing Dickinson and/or Whitman”; “Literary Magazines: Meeting Places”; and “Uniform Spines: Book Series.”

The submissions deadline for these seminars has been extended to July 20, 2008.

Additional prospective members and current members alike are encouraged to apply. Please see below for details.

Submission form and deadline. Submissions must reach the convener of the session by July 20. They should be sent to both (1) the convener of the seminar and (2) the Association’s office at alsc@bu.edu. On your e-mail’s “subject” line, please give your name and other information in the following form: “ALSC 2008, [Name of Session] abstract by [First Name, Last Name].” For details regarding submission length, please refer to the individual instructions for each session.

If you do not send copies to both the convener and the ALSC, we cannot guarantee that you will receive an e-mail notice acknowledging receipt of your proposal.

You must be a member of the ALSC in good standing to participate. ALSC members receive a discount on conference registration.

For more details about the conference program and information about how to join the ALSC, visit our website at www.bu.edu/literary.

General Description of the Seminar Program

The 2008 Conference in Philadelphia will continue the tradition established in 2004 of offering seminars designed to increase participation of the membership in the conference and giving them another excellent reason to attend. Modeled on what has worked successfully for such organizations as the Shakespeare Association of America and the Modernist Studies Association, these three seminars will each be led by a distinguished member of the Association.

Each seminar will have fifteen (15) guaranteed places, and each person accepted for a seminar will receive an official letter of invitation to the conference and will be listed in its program. Seminar participants will write brief position papers (2-4 pages maximum, double-spaced), and will circulate their papers to the other participants and read all the papers prior to the conference. The listing of the titles in the conference program should help participants obtain travel funding for the conference from their home colleges and universities. Senior scholars are eligible to apply for these seminars, but graduate students and junior faculty especially are encouraged to do so; we hope that senior scholars and others will spread the word and encourage their graduate students and junior colleagues to apply. The three seminars will run concurrently. Those admitted as participants in each seminar will participate in the actual discussion, but anyone at the conference is welcome to attend one of the seminars as an auditor—not a participant—provided there is sufficient room.

Seminar One: Editing Dickinson and/or Whitman
Convener: Don Share (Senior Editor, Poetry magazine)
Can Dickinson’s poetry be properly edited? What is one to do with all of those manuscripts attached to flowers or bees? What are modern editors to do with successive editions of Leaves of Grass? And why are there no modern editions of, say, Drum Taps? In this seminar, we will discuss various historical approaches to problems associated with editing Dickinson and Whitman. We will then try to come up with some new solutions (or perhaps we will decide that there are not any). Please send half-page abstracts or short papers (2-4 pages) as Word attachments to dshare@poetryfoundation.org. All perspectives welcome; we hope to include participants who have lots of experience in editing these poets as well as participants who have none.

Seminar Two: Literary Magazines: Meeting Places
Convener: Andrew McNeillie (Oxford University Press, founding editor of the new literary magazine Archipelago)
The concept of the “literary” might be a relatively recent one but this is no reason to dismiss it as a johnny-come-lately. It’s been around for a century and a half, or more, in some interpretations, and before it the concept of ‘poetry’, although ever complex, is as old as time. Most of us have iconic literary magazines that played key roles in our individual development and the formation of personal preference. Beyond that too, in historical terms, magazines of other eras (some even as short-lived as the May-fly) are living tissue preserved in which we can trace meaning in the making, at the cross-roads or meeting place, before criticism (beyond editorial agenda) and scholarship have quite stepped in to condition reception. This seminar wishes to concentrate on Anglo-American literary magazines of the last century and invites some contextualized case-histories of individual publications, the aim being to see what lessons they might teach for the possible creation of new literary periodicals today. Please send half-page extracts or short papers (2-4) pages to Andrew McNeillie, Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP. (andrew.mcneillie@oup.com)

Seminar Three: “Uniform Spines: Book Series”
Convener: David Yezzi (Executive Editor, The New Criterion)
Everyman Library, the Pléiade, Penguin Classics, the Library of America, the Loeb series, the Harvard Great Books—how have these influential book series, and others like them, shaped literary studies, the tastes and habits of readers, editors, scholars, and writers? What may it mean for works of literature to be included or excluded from such series? What sorts of possibilities and limitations do such series pose? This seminar invites consideration of any aspect of the relationship of book series to literature, literary culture, or the culture at large, of which literature is one part. We welcome investigations of book series in any language and from all historical periods, including speculation on the future of book series in the digital age. We are also interested in the impact of major serial editions of significant authors. Please send short papers (2-4 pages) as Word attachments to David Yezzi (yezzi@newcriterion.com).