Roberts CFP's--ALA & SAMLA

As many of you know, the Roberts Society is growing rapidly this year. There are several Roberts panels at various conferences in the coming year:

CFP: ALA Symposium in Savannah, Georgia, October 8-10, 2009.
Conference Director Olivia Carr Edenfield has requested a special panel on the work of Elizabeth Madox Roberts at this year’s fiction symposium to be held in Savannah, Georgia, in the fall. Please submit paper proposals (length: 15 to 20 minutes, depending on number of presenters) for this panel to Steve Florczyk, panel chair, at sflorczyk@msn.com before June 1, 2009. Roberts Society Honorary President H. R. Stoneback will deliver the keynote address at this year’s conference. Details: Sessions run Friday and Saturday, October 9-10. On Friday, October 9, there will be a special luncheon as well as an evening reception including the keynote address by H. R. Stoneback. On Saturday, October 10, the luncheon keynote will be delivered by Kirk Curnutt. A final celebration will take place that evening.

CFP: SAMLA Convention in Atlanta, Georgia, November 2009.
The Elizabeth Madox Roberts Society will hold two special sessions at SAMLA in 2009 in Atlanta, Georgia:

Session one, “Elizabeth Madox Roberts as Children’s Literature,” will be chaired by Jane Dionne. This session will explore the importance of using Elizabeth Madox Roberts’ poems with students across all the grades. Suggested topics include but are not limited to: 1) In what ways Roberts’ poems in Under the Tree affect children in the classroom; 2) children’s responses to Roberts’ poetry based on their age and experience; 3) techniques for teaching Roberts to a variety of children and special needs students; 4) how Roberts’ poetry may encourage more poetry to be taught across the curriculum; 5) how Roberts’ poetry, presumably for children, fits into the genres of Children’s Literature and/or Modernism. Papers may focus on one or more levels, from elementary to college. Papers should be fifteen minutes long. Please submit title and brief abstract by April 15, 2009 to Jane Dionne at janedionne@yahoo.com.

Session two, “Elizabeth Madox Roberts and the Influence of Philosophy,” will be chaired by Amanda Boyle. This session will examine the influence of philosophy in the life and writings of Elizabeth Madox Roberts. Some suggested paper topics include, but are not limited to: 1) direct philosophical influences on Roberts’ work (Bishop Berkley, Plato, etc.); 2) analysis of how philosophy may influence and be exemplified through literature, with a focus on Roberts’ writing; 3) the philosophy of existence in relation to the works of Elizabeth Madox Roberts. Papers should be fifteen minutes long. Please submit title and a brief abstract by April 15, 2009 to Amanda Boyle at Boyle687@newpaltz.edu.

Elizabeth Madox Roberts Conference

XI ANNUAL ELIZABETH MADOX ROBERTS CONFERENCE

APRIL 18-20, 2009

Harrodsburg and Springfield (Roberts’ hometown), KY

The XI Annual Elizabeth Madox Roberts Conference will be held April 18-20, 2009, at St. Catharine College (Springfield, KY) and the Beaumont Inn (Harrodsburg, KY).

Conference directors welcome papers on any aspect of Elizabeth Madox Roberts’ life and work. Papers may also deal intertextually with Roberts and other writers; Roberts in the context of the Southern Renascence; Roberts viewed from regional and historical perspectives; Roberts and Modernism; stylistic studies, etc. First time reader response papers or essays of discovery and celebration from new readers of Roberts are strongly encouraged.

Titles and abstracts are due January 10, 2009. Papers should be no more than 15 minutes in oral presentation. Academic paper sessions will be held at St. Catharine College, Springfield. The conference headquarters is the lovely and legendary Beaumont Inn, Harrodsburg.

Email title and abstract to:
Nicole McDaniel (Texas A&M), Program Chair, at nicolemcdc@tamu.edu.

Please send a copy also to at least one other member of the Program Committee:
Goretti Vianney-Benca (SUNY New Paltz) at vianneyg@aol.com; Vicki Barker (Carson-Newman College) at vbarker@cn.edu; William Boyle (University of Mississippi) at williamboyle4444@yahoo.com; Matthew Nickel (University of Louisiana-Lafayette) at sapling805@yahoo.com; Alex Shakespeare (Boston College) at alexandriesse@yahoo.com; Natalie Khoury (University of Georgia) at nkhoury@uga.edu; or Gisele Sigal (Universite de Pau, France) at gisele.sigal@iutbayonne.univ-pau.fr.

Direct all other conference inquiries to the Conference Co-directors: Brad McDuffie, Dept. of English, Nyack College (bigtwoheartedriver@earthlink.net) and H. R. Stoneback, Dept. of English, SUNY New Paltz, 75 S. Manheim Blvd., New Paltz, NY 12561 (Stoney_Sparrow@webtv.net).

See the Roberts Society website (emrsociety.com) for further information, archived newsletters, and recent critical studies of Roberts.

Elizabeth Madox Roberts: Essays of Discovery and Recovery

Elizabeth Madox Roberts: Essays of Discovery and Recovery

Edited by H. R. Stoneback, Nicole Camastra, and Steven Florczyk

"This volume is the second of the two books devoted to Elizabeth Madox Roberts to be published in the same year--annus mirabilis! Before the appearance of these two volumes, more than four decades had elapsed since the last book-length critical study of Roberts was published. In many ways, this book serves as a companion piece to its immediate predecessor, Elizabeth Madox Roberts: Essays of Reassessment and Reclamation (edited by H. R. Stoneback and Steven Florczyk). We will not repeat what was said in the introduction to that volume regarding the history of the Elizabeth Madox Roberts Society, from whose annual conferences most of the essays in the present study emanate. It will suffice here to note that the publication of both these landmark volumes signals the celebration, in 2008, of the tenth anniversary of the Roberts Society." (from the Introduction)

This new book of critical essays on Elizabeth Madox Roberts is available for sale at $20 (includes shipping and handling). Included in this book is new fiction by Roberts (fragments from Sallie May, "The Prophet" and notes On Poetry), and critical essays by H. R. Stoneback, William H. Slavick, Wade Hall, Vicki Barker, William Boyle, Nicole Camastra, Damian Carpenter, Steven Florczyk, Angela Green, Tina Iraca, Emily Kane, Brad McDuffie, Jennings Mace, Gregg Neikirk, Matthew Nickel, Erin Presley, Katy Shores, Nicole Boucher Spottke and Nicole Valentino, James Stamant, John Weatherford, and Gerald Preher.

Anyone interested in purchasing a copy, please send a check (for $20 made out to H.R. Stoneback) to:

H.R. Stoneback
Elizabeth Madox Roberts Society
Department of English
SUNY New Paltz
New Paltz, NY 12561

Illumination & Praise: Poems for Elizabeth Madox Roberts and Kentucky

Des Hymnagistes Press is proud to announce its most recent publication of Illumination & Praise: Poems for Elizabeth Madox Roberts and Kentucky. This volume, edited by Matthew Nickel, contains poets: H. R. Stoneback, Charlie Hughes, Ron Whitehead, Charles Semones, Lynn Behrendt, Ed Butler, William Boyle, Alex Andriesse Shakespeare, Brad McDuffie, James Stamant, Gregg Neikirk, Michael Beilfuss, Damian Carpenter, Steven Florczyk, and Matthew Nickel. This past weekend at Penn's Store outside Gravel Switch, KY, the Elizabeth Madox Roberts Society members included in the book read their poems in dedication to the writer and her native soil of Kentucky. There are still a few copies available for sale (1 book for $12 or 2 books for $20). Please contact deshymnagistes@gmail.com for further information.

Roberts Sessions at SAMLA, November 7-9, 2008 in Louisville, KY

Papers may deal with all aspects of Roberts’s work and life. Suggested topics include but are not limited to: Roberts in the context of Southern literature, Roberts and other writers (i.e. Roberts and Faulkner, Roberts and Yeats, Roberts and James Still, Roberts and Wendell Berry, Roberts and John Burroughs), Roberts and Southern Agrarianism, Roberts’s literary and stylistic influences (i.e. Synge, Hardy, Joyce, Homer, Hopkins, Beethoven), Roberts and nature writing, Roberts and Modernism, Roberts and the novel, Roberts as poet, Roberts as writer of short fiction, Roberts and regionalism, Roberts and the politics of literary reputation, Roberts and feminism, Roberts and Kentucky. Papers should run between fifteen and twenty minutes long. Please submit a title and 250 word abstract to Steven Florczyk (florczyk@uga.edu) or Goretti Vianney-Benca (VianneyG@aol.com). The deadline for proposals is May 15, 2008.

Robert Penn Warren Circle Seeking Papers on Roberts/Warren Connection

Robert Penn Warren Circle CFP's--SAMLA 2008

Warren’s was a critical voice that either explicitly or implicitly provided analysis of and approbation for women writers such as Caroline Gordon, Elizabeth Madox Roberts, Eudora Welty, and Katherine Anne Porter, among many others; on the other hand, Warren himself admitted the influence of more than one woman’s expertise in writing on his own. This panel seeks to examine the sources, outcomes, and/or significances of Warren’s critical or artistic appreciations of such women writers as revealed through his personal, critical, or artistic relationships with any or all of the women whose writing careers overlapped with or intersected his own. By email only, send proposals of 250-500 words, suitable for 15-20 minute presentations, to Pat Bradley, , by 12 May 2008. Questions on the topic may also be directed to that email address.

Elizabeth Madox Roberts: Essays of Reassessment & Reclamation

Elizabeth Madox Roberts: Essays of Reassessment & Reclamation, edited by H.R. Stoneback and Steven Florczyk, may be purchased from your local bookstore, on-line vendors such as Amazon or Barnes & Noble, or directly from the publisher.


Elizabeth Madox Roberts: Essays of Reassessment & Reclamation (2008), 335 pages. ISBN 978-1-893239-77-7 $20.00

Wind Publications
600 Overbrook Dr
Nicholasville, KY 40356

This volume is the first book-length collection of critical essays to deal with the life and work of Elizabeth Madox Roberts. It is also the first book of any kind, in many years, to be devoted to the study of Roberts, and it is the hope of the editors and the many contributors here that this book will serve to redress the neglect of a writer whom we believe to be one of the most important Kentucky — and Southern and American — writers.

This publication coincides with the tenth anniversary of the Elizabeth Madox Roberts Society, which holds its annual spring conferences at Saint Catharine College (and in Harrodsburg and Springfield, Kentucky). The work of this society has been, as the title of this volume indicates, to reassess and to reclaim a writer who, though widely known and well-regarded by her contemporaries, is little known today.

When her first novel, The Time of Man, appeared in 1926, it was hailed by a national — indeed international — chorus of writers and critics as one of the finest American novels ever. Remarkably, such critical esteem was echoed by great popular success. While neither critical favor nor fame ensures any writer’s canonical endurance, the way that Roberts has fallen off the literary map since her death in 1941 presents a curious case to ponder. It is to be hoped that this volume will contribute to a new cartography, a redrawn map of twentieth-century American literature with Roberts securely placed and located.