Conferences
Link to MLA Conference 2023
Link to ALA Conference 2023
Sponsored by the Henry James Society and Other Organizations
The Henry James Society
American Literature Association
35th Annual Conference
The Palmer House, Chicago
23-26 May 2024
Call for Papers
Weird James
Sharon Cameron’s Thinking in Henry James pointed up the weirdness of how consciousness works in his novels. She cites this example from The Portrait of a Lady, in which the subject of Isabel Archer’s reverie suddenly appears: “The effect was strange, for Madame Merle was already so present to her vision that her appearance in the flesh was like suddenly, and rather awfully, seeing a painted picture move.” In Mark Fisher’s account, “the weird is constituted by a presence – the presence of that which does not belong. In some cases of the weird (those with which Lovecraft was obsessed) the weird is marked by an exorbitant presence, a teeming which exceeds our capacity to represent it.”
For this panel, we seek papers that examine how the weird manifests in Jaes texts. Our hope is to approach the weird as a family affair: whether Henry James Sr.’s Swedenborgian musings, William James’s interest in exceptional mental states, or Alice James’s record of weird states of body and mind in her Diary. In their writings, the Jameses attend not just to the ghostly, extraordinary, or supernatural, but also to the everyday oddities of how human beings experience the world.
We welcome diverse approaches to the weird, and offer the following as possible subjects for consideration:
- States of consciousness
- Weird bodies, faces, voices
- Stylistic weirdness
- Apparitions, visitations, hauntings
- Mysticism
- Life after death, liminal states of being
- Optical illusions
- Spirit photography
- Odd coincidences
- Weird places, atmospheres, histories, legends
- The uncanny, the fantastic
- Forebodings, omens, fate, destiny
- Strange situations
- Eccentricity, strangeness, oddity, awkwardness
- The supernatural, enchantment
Please send a 250-word abstract and short biography to Jane F. Thrailkill ([email protected]) Sarah Wadsworth ([email protected]) by January 19, 2024. Please note if you have any AV requirements. For more details about the American Literature Association Conference please visit this site: https://americanliteratureassociation.org/ala-conferences/ala-annual-conference/
Henry James Society
9th International Conference, Kyoto, Japan
"Community and Communicability"
The Henry James Society
Ninth International Conference
Kyoto
5-8 July 2023
Community and Communicability
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Conference Program
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