College of Adult and Graduate Studies

Imaginative pictures help explore, in vivid ways, the dilemmas that Virtue Theory has attempted to wrestle. Building upon MacIntyre’s understanding of tradition, this paper will propose an understanding of narratives and their moral import on the culture writ large. This phenomenon will be examined through Neil Gaiman’s American Gods. It is in such imagined realities that the traditions underwriting moral value explode onto the page, making their way into the mind of the reader. Reading fiction becomes an act of moral formation, giving flesh and bones to the “kinds of degeneration” to which the virtues have so often fallen prey.

The Ernest Hemingway Society | Call for Papers
Modern Language Association 2022 Convention | Washington, DC | January 6-9

Deadline for Submissions: March 19, 2021
Name of Organization: The Ernest Hemingway Society
Contact Email: sean.hadley@faulkner.edu

All Hem’s Literary Friends

Ernest Hemingway’s reputation as a writer is sometimes eclipsed in the popular mind by his relationships. And as James M. Hutchisson’s 2016 biography, Ernest Hemingway: A New Life, demonstrated, Hemingway’s relationships were complex and integral to his creative output. Over the decades, Hemingway’s relationship’s with key figures has been explored in-depth. William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and John Dos Passos have each received book length treatments regarding their friendship with Papa Hemingway.

In 2014, at the International Hemingway Conference, the connections between Hemingway and Edith Wharton were explored at a roundtable session, and the result was an intellectually stimulating line of argument. In keeping with the spirit of such inquiry, this panel invites explorations of Hemingway’s relationships to some lesser-known authors as well as treatments on some of the less explored literary connections. What might be gained by putting Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms in conversation with J. R. R. Tolkien’s work? Might there be something of value in contrasting visions of American life in To Have and Have Not and Harry Sylvester’s Dayspring? Given Hemingway’s reading habits, there is much still to be mined in the literary connections between Hemingway and the great wealth of 20th Century authors.

Potential relationships to explore might include:

 Catholic poets, such as Conrad Aiken, and religious aspects of Hemingway’s work
 Novelists, such as J. F. Powers, and the novels of Hemingway
 World War I participants, such as J. R. R. Tolkien, and Hemingway’s war experiences
 Nature writers, such as John Hay, and the expressions of the natural in Hemingway
 Realism in the works of Henry Lawson and literary references in Islands in the Stream
 Textual analysis of Sherwood Anderson and Ernest Hemingway
 Religious understatement in Ernest Hemingway and Walker Percy

Please direct your 250–word proposal and a short professional bio to Sean Hadley (sean.hadley@faulkner.edu). The deadline for proposals is March 19, 2021. Papers are generally limited to 15 minutes, however shorter 10–minute presentations and longer 20–minute presentations will be considered dependent upon interest.

Additional details about the 2022 MLA Conference may be found online at:
mla.org/Convention

For more information about the Ernest Hemingway Society, please visit the Society’s website at:
https://www.hemingwaysociety.org/.

CFP for SAMLA 93, November 4-6, 2021, Atlanta, GA
The Company You Keep: Reading, Writing, & Socializing in Religious Literature
Affiliate Group: Southeast Conference on Christianity and Literature
Literature is rife with the concept of the “social,” whether it be through exclusion or connection. The Bible records letters sent, Church History preserves the ways in which communities gathered and encouraged one another regardless of distance, and Christian writers have invested heavily in understanding the topic of community and social structures. This panel welcomes submissions that address the topics of intimacy, community, or exile. We welcome papers exploring literary works that engage with Christianity (or religion broadly) on the idea of the “social.” Papers might consider one or more of the following:
• Definitions of community in the writings of A. J. Mojtabai
• Social networks, broadly conceived, in the writings of Walker Percy
• Letter writing between authors as a source for inspiration (i.e. the letters of Ernest Hemingway)
• News or gossip in relation to community connections (i.e. gossip in the works of William Faulkner or the importance of the news in James Fenimore Cooper’s writing)
• Exile and reconciliation in American Catholic fiction (i.e. J. F. Powers and Harry Sylvester)
• The nature and definition of exilic literature (or literary depictions of characters in exile)
• The question of authenticity in religious literature
• Ways that literary texts comfort the reader or challenge religious traditions
• The conventions and techniques of religious literature and their adaptation over time and distance
• How religious writers turn to other religious traditions for resources of community or inspiration
• The relationship between society and exile in religion
• Pedagogical approaches to religious literature
• The nature of communities built around the reading of good books
• Creative writing submissions addressing the panel theme are also welcome

Please send a 250-word proposal, a CV, and any A/V requests to Sean C. Hadley at sean.hadley@faulkner.edu. (For creative writing submissions, please submit the full work to be read and not an abstract). All abstracts or creative writing submissions are due May 31.