Calls for papers
The Henry James Society
Modern Language Association Annual Convention
4-7 January 2024
Philadelphia
CALL FOR PAPERS
The Henry James Society invites proposals for the following panel.
Henry James and Event(s)
We invite proposals which engage with the literary and theoretical dimensions of events in the work of Henry James. Events, defined as past or present disruptions or merely irregular occurrences, crowd James’s work, and whether directly described or peripherally touched upon, events generate change. Events bring his characters together (at tea “ceremonies” in beautiful gardens or lavish parties at historic country houses); inflect his own understanding of places (the American South in terms of the Civil War); and motivate further in/action (undisclosed intimate events that force themselves on the characters). The ambiguity inherent in James’s writing complicates the narration of events, rendering them often inconceivable, unnameable, or inaccessible. How does James’s writing—autobiographical, fictional, dramatic, critical—address both social or historical events and personal everyday occurrences which may ignite major or minor joys, pains, traumas, and crises? How can his literary production itself be characterized as an “event”?
Proposals could address any topic relating to this theme. Possible topics might include:
- Celebration
- Festivity
- Gathering
- War
- Revolution
- Resistance
- Commemoration
- Crisis
- Catastrophe
- Transition
- Chance
- Accident
- Trauma
- Interruption
- Death
- Violence
- Contingency
- Style
- Story as event
- Staged events
Please send a 300-word abstract and a brief bio to Anna Despotopoulou adespoto@enl.uoa.gr and Sarah Wadsworth sarah.wadsworth@marquette.edu
Deadline for submissions: Tuesday, 21 March 2023.
The Henry James Society
Ninth International Conference
Kyoto
5-8 July 2023
Call for Papers
Community and Communicability
It will be a joy for all Jamesians to gather together after a long period of isolation caused by the global Covid-19 pandemic. We are all hyper-aware of the need to re-establish community and to create new communities to restart and rethink our lives, both academic and private. “Community and Communicability” will spotlight issues concerning creating and maintaining communities that are also at the core of James’s writing by exploring the role of language and forms of social relations and networks. It will also focus on questions of nonverbal communications of the body and touching, as well as James’s views of illness and recuperation. We welcome proposals for twenty-minute papers addressing any aspect of the topic as suggested below, but other approaches are invited as well.
- James family relationships
- James and the publishing world
- Circulation (e.g., of literary magazines)
- Writers and artists at the end of the 19th century
- What James (or the Jameses) can tell us about the pandemic/ social crisis
- Queer glances and interactions in James's work
- Letters, telegraphs, and other communication tools
- Border-crossing and identity
- Humans and animals
- The living and the dead
- James and film adaptations
- James and life-writing
- James and translations
- Jamesian collaborations: artists, illustrators, writers, directors, etc.
- Social and professional networks
- Women and society in James
- Illness and care / healing
- Isolation / socializing
- Spaces of sociability
- Globalization, migration, mobility, and illness
- The body and the brain in relation to communicability
- Creativity in crisis
- Communal experiments in crisis
- Reading and / or teaching James in the Pandemic
Please send a 250-word abstract and short biography to Hitomi Nabae (hitomi@inst.kobe-cufs.ac.jp) and Sarah Wadsworth (sarah.wadsworth@marquette.edu) by 1 Dec. 2022. Please note if you have any AV requirements.
The Ninth International Conference of the Henry James Society will be an in-person conference currently planned for Kyoto, Japan with a contingency plan to hold the conference in the United States (tentatively in Milwaukee, Wisconsin) if travel restrictions make the Kyoto location unmanageable. All applicants are advised to check travel restrictions and be aware of local conditions. If it becomes necessary to change the location from Japan to the United States, attendees will be informed by 1 Feb. 2023.
Calls for Papers
LEON EDEL PRIZE
The Leon Edel Prize is awarded annually for the best essay on Henry James by a beginning scholar. The prize carries with it an award of $300, and the prize-winning essay will be published in HJR.
The competition is open to applicants who have not held a full-time academic appointment for more than four years. Independent scholars and graduate students are encouraged to apply.
Essays should be 20-30 pages (including notes), original, and not under submission elsewhere or previously published. Please send the manuscript in Microsoft Word format.
Send electronic submissions to: hjamesr@creighton.edu
Author's name should not appear on the manuscript. Please identify essays as submissions for the Leon Edel Prize. The competition is limited to one submission per author.
A brief curriculum vitae should be included.
Decisions about regular publication are also made at the same time as the prize decision.
Deadline: November 1, 2023