EMR Conference April 2015

Call for Papers

The XVII Annual Elizabeth Madox Roberts Conference:   

April 24-27, 2015

St. Catharine College—Springfield, Kentucky

We welcome papers that deal intertextually with Roberts and other writers: especially Roberts and Earl Hamner, Roberts and C. E. Morgan; Roberts in the context of the Southern Renascence; Roberts viewed from regional and historical perspectives; Roberts and Modernism; Roberts and Southern history; Roberts and Religion, etc. First-time reader response papers or essays of discovery and celebration from new readers of Roberts are strongly encouraged. Conference directors also welcome papers on recently published works by Roberts. In 2012, the Reading Roberts Series published Roberts' unfinished novel Flood (ed. Vicki Barker), manuscript fragments and poems in Reading Roberts: Prospect and Retrospect (eds. William Boyle, H.R. Stoneback, and Matthew Nickel), and Daniel Boone variants in Kentucky: Poets of Place (ed. Matthew Nickel).

Titles and abstracts are due December 1, 2014. Papers should be no more than 15 minutes in oral presentation. Academic paper sessions will be held at St. Catharine College in Springfield.

E-mail title and abstract to both of the Co-Program Chairs: Jessica M. Nickel, jesmackenzie@hotmail.com (Misericordia University) and Daniel J. Pizappi, dpizappi@hawkmail.newpaltz.edu (SUNY New Paltz).

Direct all other conference inquiries to Conference Co-Directors: Matthew Nickel, mattcnickel@gmail.com (Dept. of English, Misericordia University) and H. R. Stoneback hrs714@gmail.com (Dept. of English, SUNY New Paltz).

College English Association (Baltimore, March 27-29, 2014)

College English Association (Baltimore, March 27-29, 2014)

Elizabeth Madox Roberts: Past & Present

Papers for this session should deal with Roberts’ life and work. Suggested topics include but are not limited to: Roberts’ legacy past and present; Roberts and biography; Roberts and influence; Roberts and intertextuality; Roberts and Southern Literature; Roberts, Place and Time; Roberts and Regionalism; Roberts and Feminism; Roberts and neglect; the Roberts revival; Roberts and other writers (Pound, Faulkner, Hemingway, Eliot, Woolf, Joyce, Tate, etc). Please send 250 word abstract to Matthew Nickel at mattcnickel@gmail.com by 15 September 2013.

Elizabeth Madox Roberts Annual Conference 2014

The XVI Annual Elizabeth Madox Roberts Conference
April 26-28, 2014 Harrodsburg and Springfield (Roberts' hometown), KY

The XVI Annual Elizabeth Madox Roberts Conference will be held April 19-21, 2014, at St. Catharine College (Springfield, KY) and the Beaumont Inn (Harrodsburg, KY). We welcome papers that deal intertextually with Roberts and other writers: especially Roberts and Earl Hamner, Roberts and C. E. Morgan; Roberts in the context of the Southern Renascence; Roberts viewed from regional and historical perspectives; Roberts and Modernism; Roberts and Southern history; Roberts and Religion, etc. First-time reader response papers or essays of discovery and celebration from new readers of Roberts are strongly encouraged. Conference directors also welcome papers on recently published works by Roberts. In 2012, the Reading Roberts Series published Roberts’ unfinished novel Flood (ed. Vicki Barker), manuscript fragments and poems in Reading Roberts: Prospect & Retrospect (eds. William Boyle, H. R. Stoneback, and Matthew Nickel), and Daniel Boone variants in Kentucky: Poets of Place (ed. Matthew Nickel).

Titles and abstracts are due January 7, 2014. Papers should be no more than 15 minutes in oral presentation. Academic paper sessions will be held at St. Catharine College in Springfield. The conference headquarters is the lovely and legendary Beaumont Inn in Harrodsburg.

Email title and abstract to both of the Co-Program Chairs: Jessica Mackenzie Conti (SUNY New Paltz) at jesmackenzie@hotmail.com and Jamie Stamant (Texas A & M University) at stam202@tamu.edu.

Direct all other conference inquiries to the Co-Conference Directors: Matthew Nickel (Dept. of English, Misericordia University) at mattcnickel@gmail.com and H. R. Stoneback, (Dept. of English, SUNY New Paltz) at hrs714@gmail.com.

Earl Hamner and The Time of Man

As many of you are aware from our annual newsletter articles by H. R. Stoneback, Earl Hamner--creator of The Waltons and writer of numerous works, including, Fifty Roads to Town, Spencer's Mountain, You Can't Get There From Here, and others--has expressed his indebtedness to Elizabeth Madox Roberts and The Time of Man. Please read his own thoughts about Roberts on his blog here or here:
http://earlhamner.blogspot.com/2013/07/a-noble-writer.html?showComment=1373302996478#c8075089292126382021

SAMLA in Atlanta 2013: EMR CFP

SAMLA is back in Atlanta, Nov 8-10, 2013. Please see the following two CFP's.

Elizabeth Madox Roberts: Prospect & Retrospect

Papers for this session may deal with all aspects of Roberts’s work and life. Suggested topics include, but are not limited to, the following: Roberts and new work (particularly her posthumously published unfinished novel Flood); Roberts and her manuscripts; Roberts in the context of Southern literature; Roberts and Southern Agrarianism; Roberts’ literary and stylistic influences (i.e., Synge, Hardy, Joyce, Homer, Hopkins, Beethoven, Pound); Roberts and religion; 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; and, Roberts and Kentucky. Abstracts should be 250 words and sent by June 1, 2013 to Jessica Mackenzie Conti (SUNY-New Paltz) at jesmackenzie@hotmail.com.

Elizabeth Madox Roberts and Other Writers

Papers for this session should deal with Elizabeth Madox Roberts and other writers. Topics may include but are not limited to: Roberts and her contemporaries (Roberts and Pound, Roberts and Faulkner, Roberts and Hemingway, Roberts and Woolf, Roberts and Wescott, etc); Roberts and her influences; Roberts’ literary friendships; Roberts’ epistolary relationships; those influenced by Roberts; Roberts as Kentucky writer; Roberts as Southern Writer. Abstracts should be 250 words and sent by June 1, 2013 to Matthew Nickel (SUNY-New Paltz) at mattcnickel@gmail.com.

XV Annual Elizabeth Madox Roberts Conference

Call for Papers

The XV Annual Elizabeth Madox Roberts Conference
April 20-22, 2013 Harrodsburg and Springfield (Roberts' hometown), KY

The XV Annual Elizabeth Madox Roberts Conference will be held April 20-22, 2013, at St. Catharine College (Springfield, KY) and the Beaumont Inn (Harrodsburg, KY). We welcome papers that 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; Roberts and Southern history; Roberts and Religion, etc. First-time reader response papers or essays of discovery and celebration from new readers of Roberts are strongly encouraged. Conference directors also welcome papers on recently published works by Roberts. In 2012, the Reading Roberts Series published Roberts’ unfinished novel Flood (ed. Vicki Barker), manuscript fragments and poems in Reading Roberts: Prospect & Retrospect (eds. William Boyle, H. R. Stoneback, and Matthew Nickel), and Daniel Boone variants in Kentucky: Poets of Place (ed. Matthew Nickel).

Titles and abstracts are due January 7, 2013. Papers should be no more than 15 minutes in oral presentation. Academic paper sessions will be held at St. Catharine College in Springfield. The conference headquarters is the lovely and legendary Beaumont Inn in Harrodsburg.

Email title and abstract to Jessica Mackenzie Conti (SUNY New Paltz), Program Chair at jesmackenzie@hotmail.com.

Direct all other conference inquiries to the Co-Conference Directors: Matthew Nickel (Dept. of English, SUNY New Paltz) at mattcnickel@gmail.com and H. R. Stoneback, (Dept. of English, SUNY New Paltz) at hrs714@gmail.com.

A New Edition of Roberts' The Great Meadow

Hesperus Press (UK, http://www.hesperuspress.com/web/) will be publishing a new edition of The Great Meadow.

Below is their press release information:

THE GREAT MEADOW

Elizabeth Madox Roberts

Introduction by competition winner

Michael Wynne

 

31 October 2012

9781843913887

B format PB

200pp

£8.99

Hesperus Press is very proud to be celebrating its 10^th anniversary this autumn.

To honour the occasion, In June 2012 Hesperus Press launched a competition asking members of the public to nominate one out-of-print book they would like to see back in print.

The winning book, which will be published in October 2012 by Hesperus is

The Great Meadow by Elizabeth Madox Roberts.

First published in 1930 and shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize, The Great Meadow is a historical novel set in the early days of Kentucky settlement. Intertwined with a flowing romantic saga of young love on the Kentucky trail, are richly painted scenes colonial America.

Diony Hall has waited for many years for her betrothed to return to marry her. Trying to fathom the nature of identity and her place in the vast newly created America, Diony spends her time at the family hearthside, combining her love of reading with her roles within the family circle and the daily tasks on the homestead. When Berk Jarvis returns and they are married, they both bid farewell to Virginia, family, community and security to head out to found a new family and a new life together in the wilderness of Kentucky

What follows is a breathtaking story of love and death, as the settlers cross the Appalachian mountains and struggle to carve a new life on the unforgiving frontier at the mercy of shortages, harsh winters and the perpetual danger of Indian attack. This astonishing novel, with its rhythmic prose, has too long been forgotten

The winning entry came from Michael Wynne and the new Hesperus edition of The Great Meadow will contain a 500 word introduction written by him.

Reading Roberts Series

The Reading Roberts Series is a project committed to publishing a wide range of scholarly and literary volumes devoted to the work of Elizabeth Madox Roberts, including previously unpublished Roberts manuscripts, critical monographs on Roberts, collections of critical essays on Roberts and her legacy, volumes of poetry and other creative endeavors that illuminate the terroir of Roberts' work, reissued volumes of importance to Roberts Scholarship, and other works.
 

We currently have three books available for purchase now (and others currently under production--check back for news). 

1. Elizabeth Madox Roberts, Flood (an unpublished unfinished novel by Roberts). Editor, Vicki Barker

 

2. Reading Roberts: Prospect & Retrospect (a collection of essays on Roberts and her work). Editors, H. R. Stoneback, William Boyle, and Matthew Nickel

3. Kentucky: Poets of Place (and anthology of poetry). Editor, Matthew Nickel. 

The list price of the books in the series is $20 each. Send your order with updated mailing address (and check payable to “Tina Iraca”) to the EMRS Treasurer, Tina Iraca, 16 Montgomery St., Tivoli, NY 12583. Please encourage your library to order these books as well.

Kentucky Poets of Place

Kentucky: Poets of Place, a new anthology published by The Elizabeth Madox Roberts Society, edited by Matthew Nickel, and including poems by famous Kentucky writers like Wendell Berry, Elizabeth Madox Roberts, Robert Penn Warren, H. R. Stoneback, and others (Dave Smith, Matthew Haughton, Ricardo Nazario y Colon, Ron Smith, Vivian Shipley, Jessica Conti, Gregg Neikirk, Shawn Rubenfeld, Chris Paolini, Chris Lawrence, Matthew Nickel, etc.), will be premiered during Kentucky Writers Day at Penn's Store in Gravel Switch, KY, Sunday April 22, between 3-4 pm. Some poets included in the anthology will be reading. See you there!

CFP SAMLA

CFP: SAMLA 2012
Elizabeth Madox Roberts and Poetry

Papers for this session should deal with Elizabeth Madox Roberts and Poetry. Suggested topics include an analysis of the contrasting images and poems in In The Great Steep’s Garden, Roberts’ poetry as children’s verse (especially throughout Under the Tree and even Song in the Meadow), the historic and folkloric—even mythic—contexts of her poems, Roberts as mystical poet, Roberts and the ballad form, Roberts as an Imagist, intertextualities between Roberts and other poets, Roberts’s philosophy on poetry and art, and Roberts’s prose and dialogue as poetry. Papers should run between fifteen and twenty minutes long. By June 1, 2011, please submit a title and a 250-word abstract to James Stamant, Texas A&M University, at stam202@tamu.edu.

CFP: SAMLA 2012
New Work By/About Elizabeth Madox Roberts

Especially desired are papers on Roberts' just-published FLOOD manuscript and other works in the Reading Roberts Series of the Elizabeth Madox Roberts Society. Other topics dealing with the life or works of Roberts will also be considered. Please send a brief abstract which reveals the focus of your paper by May 25, 2012 to Prof. Gregg Neikirk. Microsoft Word attachments are preferred (gneikirk@westfield.ma.edu (or mail to Dept. of English, Westfield State University, Westfield, MA 01086). Papers should not exceed 15 minutes in delivery.

CFP ALA 2012

Call for Papers for the 2012 American Literature Association Conference in San Francisco, California

The Elizabeth Madox Roberts society is seeking papers for a sponsored panel at the 2012 American Literature Association conference in San Francisco, May 24–27.

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 a regional and historical perspective, Roberts and Modernism, Roberts' poetry or short stories, Roberts and feminism, etc.

Titles and abstracts are due by January 23, 2012. Papers should be no longer than 15 minutes in oral presentation. Email your proposal to Lyndsey Brown at lyndseydbrown@gmail.com.

Call For Papers

The XIV Annual Elizabeth Madox Roberts Conference
April 21-23, 2012 Harrodsburg and Springfield (Roberts' hometown), KY

The XIV Annual Elizabeth Madox Roberts Conference will be held April 21-23, 2012, 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; Roberts and Southern history; Roberts and Religion, etc. First time reader response papers or essays of discovery and celebration from new readers of Roberts are also strongly encouraged.

Titles and abstracts are due January 7, 2012. Papers should be no more than 15 minutes in oral presentation. Academic paper sessions will be held at St. Catharine College in Springfield. The conference headquarters is the lovely and legendary Beaumont Inn in Harrodsburg.

Email title and abstract to Jessica Mackenzie Conti (SUNY New Paltz), Program Chair at jesmackenzie@hotmail.com.

Direct all other conference inquiries to the Co-Conference Directors: Matthew Nickel (University of Louisiana—Lafayette) at mattcnickel@gmail.com and H. R. Stoneback, (Dept. of English, SUNY New Paltz) at Stoney_Sparrow@webtv.net.

Call For Papers: SAMLA

The Elizabeth Madox Roberts Society will host two panels at SAMLA, Atlanta, GA, Nov 4-6, 2011.

Elizabeth Madox Roberts Society, Session I

Elizabeth Madox Roberts: Discovery and Recovery

Papers for this session may deal with all aspects of Roberts’s work and life. Suggested topics include, but are not limited to, the following: 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; and, Roberts and Kentucky. By June 1, 2011, please submit a title and a 250-word abstract to Cristin Rogowski-Vita, Independent Scholar, at CrissyRogowski@gmail.com. Papers should run between fifteen and twenty minutes long.

Elizabeth Madox Roberts Society, Session II

Elizabeth Madox Roberts and Poetry

Papers for this session should deal with Elizabeth Madox Roberts and Poetry. Suggested topics include an analysis of the contrasting images and poems in In The Great Steep’s Garden, Roberts’ poetry as children’s verse (especially throughout Under the Tree and even Song in the Meadow), the historic and folkloric—even mythic—contexts of her poems, Roberts as mystical poet, Roberts and the ballad form, Roberts as an Imagist, intertextualities between Roberts and other poets, Roberts’s philosophy on poetry and art, and Roberts’s prose and dialogue as poetry. Papers should run between fifteen and twenty minutes long. By June 1, 2011, please submit a title and a 250-word abstract to Matthew Nickel, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, at mnickel@louisiana.edu.

XIII Call for Papers

Call for Papers

The XIII Annual Elizabeth Madox Roberts Conference
April 16-18, 2011 Harrodsburg and Springfield (Roberts' hometown), KY

The XIII Annual Elizabeth Madox Roberts Conference will be held April 16-18, 2011, 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; Roberts and Southern history; etc. First time reader response papers or essays of discovery and celebration from new readers of Roberts are also strongly encouraged.
Titles and abstracts are due January 10, 2011. 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 Amanda Boyle (SUNY New Paltz), Program Chair at AmandaLyn1028@gmail.com.

Direct all other conference inquiries to the Conference Director: H.R. Stoneback, Dept. of English, SUNY New Paltz at Stoney_Sparrow@webtv.net.

Penn's Store Poetry Contest Benefit

As many of you know, there were devastating floods throughout Kentucky and Tennessee last year. One place held dear to many of us in the Elizabeth Madox Roberts Society, Historic Penn's Store (http://www.pennsstore.com), was barely left standing by the floods. Penn's Store is America's oldest country store operated by the same family (relatives of Robert Penn Warren) since before the Civil War. It has been a legendary site for poetry readings and picking and singing gatherings for years.

There will be a poetry reading benefit for Penn's Store in November, and the proceeds will go directly to the Penn's Store benefit fund for restoration so that the store may open again. Anyone is welcome to participate in the poetry reading, but since it will occur in New York and some of you may be far abroad, you are invited to submit your One-Page poem to the contest before November 1st.

You may choose either to: a) send a poem (max. one-page, somehow related to the old-country-store-theme) with $5 donation and your poem will be read at
the event; b) send a poem with $10 donation and "contest entry form" (attached to this email) and your poem will be eligible for publication in the ensuing chapbook
plus awards; c) or just send a donation.

The Reading: CABALOOSA (Main St. New Paltz)

Wednesday November 17 (7 PM)

All readers are welcome who sign up in advance

* * *

Details: 1) Chapbook of poems selected from this reading will be published; 2) Contest ($10 entry fee in advance) with prizes in various categories for the best poems on the theme: The Old Country Store

Contact by November 1^st: H. R. Stoneback (stonebah@newpaltz.edu) and Amanda Boyle (amandalyn1028@gmail.com) in the English Department at SUNY-New Paltz (257-2720).

* * *

All proceeds from this Benefit Reading will go directly to the fund to save Penn’s Store. For information on Penn’s Store see www.pennsstore.com.

Contest Entry Form

Send this form with a one-page poem and $10 entry fee (check or cash) before November 1^st to: H. R. Stoneback, Department of English, SUNY-New Paltz, New Paltz, NY 12561.

Name: ___________________________________

Contact Information:____________________________________________________________________________

Title of Poem: (do not put your name on the manuscript page with the poem)__________________________________

Check One: I am an undergraduate____graduate___

student at _____________________Other________

_________________________________

Kentucky Writers Day and Roberts Society

American Premiere of Des Hymnagistes: An Anthology

The 2010 Kentucky Writers Day Celebration at Historic Penn's Store will feature the American Premiere of the new poetry volume Des Hymnagistes: An Anthology (Des Hymnagistes Press, 2010). The book will have its World Premiere and formal release celebration in June at Brunnenburg Castle in Italy, former home of Ezra Pound and now the residence of his daughter Mary de Rachewiltz. The Des Hymnagistes volume resonates with Pound's landmark Des Imagistes: An Anthology (1914). Inspired by Imagism, filtered through a century of literary history and transformed by influences such as hymns and country songs, Hymnagism is a worldwide movement with deep Kentucky roots--over the past decade, for example, many Hymnagistes poets have read their works at Kentucky Writers Day Celebrations. This new volume includes poems by descendants of the original Imagists (e.g. Pound's daughter Mary de Rachewiltz and Richard Aldington's daughter Catherine Aldington),Valerie Hemingway, as well as the work of the well-known Kentucky poet H. R. Stoneback and other rising young Hymnagiste poets. Along with Stoneback, several other contributors to the volume--A.B., William Boyle, Brad McDuffie, Matthew Nickel, Alex Shakespeare--will read at the 2010 Kentucky Writers Day, Sunday, April 25th at 2 PM, at Penn's Store. All of these Hymnagiste poets will be in Kentucky for their annual pilgrimage to the Elizabeth Madox Roberts Conference at St. Catharine College in Springfield (April 24-26). And they claim Roberts, Kentucky's great novelist, as an Imagiste, a proto-Hymnagiste.

The American Premiere and Hymnagiste Readings are scheduled for 2:00pm until 3:30pm, April 25 during the 2010 KENTUCKY WRITERS DAY CELEBRATIONS at Historic Penn's Store. Penn's Store is located at 257 Penn's Store Road, off KY HWY 243 3 miles SE of Gravel Switch, Kentucky.

The Sparrow Memorial Award and the Terry Ward Memorial Grant

In August 2008 the Roberts Society Executive Board established two memorial awards in the names of two of our most cherished charter members—Sparrow Stoneback and Terry Ward. These awards, to be presented at our annual April conference, were designed to encourage participation in our conferences by 1) first-time presenters and 2) presenters with no institutional funding support. A call for donations to the awards fund went out in the summer of 2008 and thereafter. The Roberts Society expresses its deep gratitude to all contributors.
Donations to sustain the Memorial Awards program may be made at any time. Contact Tina Iraca, EMRS Treasurer at tinair@hotmail.com, or send a check made out to Tina Iraca, with notation of amounts to be applied to the Sparrow Memorial Award and the Terry Ward Memorial Grant to: Tina Iraca, 16 Montgomery Street, Tivoli, NY 12583.

CFP EMR 2010

Call for Papers: EMR 2010

The XII Annual Elizabeth Madox Roberts Conference will be held April 24-26, 2010, 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 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; Roberts and architecture, etc. First time reader response papers or essays of discovery and celebration from new readers of Roberts are also strongly encouraged.

Titles and abstracts are due January 15, 2010.

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:
Alex Shakespeare (Boston College), Program Chair, at shakespe@bc.edu.

Please send a copy also to at least one other member of the Program Committee:

Brad McDuffie (Nyack College) bigtwoheartedriver@earthlink.net, or Amanda Boyle (SUNY New Paltz) boyle687@newpaltz.edu.

Direct all other conference inquiries to the Conference Director: H. R. Stoneback, Dept. of English, SUNY New Paltz, 75 S. Manheim Blvd., New Paltz, NY 12561 (Stoney_Sparrow@webtv.net).

Questions about Kentucky Writer’s Day should be directed to Gregg Neikirk (Westfield State College) gneikirk@wsc.ma.edu.

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