NEW: ’08 ALSC Conference Seminars Call-for-Papers

NEW: Register Online for the Conference

NEW: 2008 Conference Notes

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

The Fourteenth Annual ALSC Conference will be held in Philadelphia, October 24-26, 2008 at the Sheraton Society Hill Hotel.

The evening speaker on Saturday, October 25 will be Jhumpa Lahiri, who received the Pulitzer Prize in 2000 for her volume of stories, Interpreter of Maladies. Her novel The Namesake was published in the fall of 2003; a film version of it (directed by Mira Nair) was released in 2007. Her new book of short stories, Unaccustomed Earth, will be published in 2008.

Lahiri will read from her work, and will then be in conversation, at first with Lisa Rodensky (Wellesley College), subsequently widening to others present at the dinner.

A more ample account of her life and accomplishments will feature in the Newsletter as the conference approaches.

***

2008 Conference Committee
John Talbot, Chair (Brigham Young University), Saskia Hamilton (Barnard College), Jack Kolb (UCLA), Rosanna Warren (Boston University), Susan Wolfson (Princeton University), and Michelle Yeh (UC Davis).

There will be seven plenary sessions: on Sappho and on Montaigne; on Avant-Garde Poetries and on Poetry and Song; on Beckett’s Radio Plays and on Literary Biography.

The three concurrent seminars (with graduate students particularly as participators) will be on journals; on the Library of America and such series as the Pléiade; and on the editing of Whitman and Dickinson.

There will be a poetry reading, as well as the Open Mike event.

2008 ALSC Conference - Tentative Schedule

Friday

2-3:45 p.m.
Panel One: Sappho and Her Afterlife: Performance, Reception, and Translation
Convener: Ellen Greene (University of Oklahoma)

4-5:15 p.m.
Panel Two: To Read or Not To Read: A Question of National Consequence
Convener: Mark Bauerlein (Emory University);
Discussant: Sunil Iyengar (Director of Research and Analysis, National
Endowment for the Arts)

5:45-6:45
Reception, with Presidential Address

8:30-11 p.m.
Readings and Q&A

11 p.m.-Midnight
Third Annual ALSC Open Mike

Saturday

8:30-10:15 a.m.
CONCURRENT SEMINARS

Seminar One: Editing Dickinson and/or Whitman
Convener: Don Share (Senior Editor, Poetry magazine)

          Seminar Two: Literary Magazines: Meeting Places
          Convener: Andrew McNeillie (Oxford University Press,
          founding editor of the new literary magazine Archipelago)

Seminar Three: Uniform Spines: Book Series
Convener: David Yezzi (Executive Editor, The New Criterion)

10:30 a.m. – 12:15 p.m.
Panel Three: Poetry and Song
Convener: Stephen Burt (Harvard University)

1:30 p.m. – 3:15 p.m.
Panel Four: Literary Biography
Convener: Edward Mendelson (Columbia University)

3:30-5:15 p.m.
Panel Five: Exploring Samuel Beckett’s Radio Plays
Convener: Robert Scanlan (Harvard University)

5:45-7 p.m.
ALSC Members’ Meeting

8-(approximately) 11 p.m.
Banquet and featured reading by Jhumpa Lahiri with subsequent discussion between Lahiri and Lisa Rodensky (Wellesley College)

Sunday

8:30-10:15 a.m.
Panel Six: Montaigne and the Shape of Opinion
Convener: George Hoffmann (University of Michigan)

10:30 a.m – 12:15 p.m.
Panel Seven: Avant-Garde Poetics:
“Does the term Avant-garde apply to poetry today?”
Convener: Adelaide Russo (Louisiana State University)