"Imagining the Past; Remembering the Future"
Go to Registration Form * Housing Information * Tours * Conference Schedule
June 21-25, 2000
Salve Regina University
Newport, Rhode Island
Carole Shaffer-Koros, Sharon Shaloo, Annette Zilversmit, Conference Directors
Co-Sponsored by Salve Regina University
Wednesday, June 21 | Thursday, June 22 | Friday, June 23 | Saturday, June 24 | Sunday, June 25 |
Conference Program
--LAST REVISED May 19, 2000--
1 p.m. to 6 p.m. -- Conference Registration,
Young Building, Bellevue Ave at Ruggles
Street, Salve Regina University
6:00 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. -- Opening Reception and Light-Dinner
Buffet,
Dining Room and Library, Young Building
7:30 p.m. to 9: 30 p.m. -- Opening Program,
Ballroom, Young Building
Welcoming Remarks
Salve Regina & Wharton Society
Conference Directors
Keynote Address:
"Newport and Beyond: Edith Wharton's Search for
Social Values,"
Eleanor Dwight, New York City
Thursday, June 22, 2000 top
Thursday, 9:00 a.m. to 10 a.m., Session I (Plenary):
"Edith Wharton's Newport," Joan Youngken, Newport
Historical Society
Thursday, 10:15 a.m. to 11:45 a.m., Session II:
Panel A: At Your Service: the Other Newport
Chair: TBA
Donna, Harrington-Lueker, Salve
Regina University
Sarah Littlefield, Salve Regina
University
Gabriela Melendez, Preservation
Society of Newport County
Coral Woodbury, Preservation Society
of Newport County
Panel B: Life Models/Life Stories: Biographical
Interventions
Chair: TBA
"Wharton in her Books: Moments in a Life in Letters,"
Janet Beer, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK
"Souls Belated, Souls Related: Count Kessler and
Edith Wharton," Reiner Kornetta, Pedagogische Hochschule
Ludwigsburg, Germany
"'All Souls': Imagining Life: Remembering Death,"
Helen Killoran, Ohio University, Lancaster
"Exploration of Identity and Self in Wharton's Protagonists
in Exile," Ferda Asya, Ontario, Canada
Panel C: Literary Precursors: Anxiety and Influence
Chair: Lois Eveleth, Salve Regina
University
""The Legend' and Gertrude Atherton's 'The Bell
in the Fog': Female Separation Anxiety and the Ghost of Henry James," Gwen
M. Neary, Santa Rosa Junior College, Sonoma State University
"Edith Wharton and Paul Bourget: Travels and Obsessions,"
Sarah Bird Wright, Midlothian, VA
"The New Woman and the Tragic Muse: Agency and Artistry
in 'The Muse's Tragedy,' The Custom of the Country, and Robert Grant's
Unleavened Bread," Donna Campbell, Gonzaga University
Panel D: From Newport to Old New York: Talking
About the Short Fiction
Chair: Edie Thornton, University
of Wisconsin, Whitewater
"The House of Failure: Wharton's Early Newport Stories,"
conference participant
"Playing Old Maid: Refashioning the Fallen Woman
in The Old Maid," Keaghan Kay, University of South
Carolina
"Shifting Centuries, Shifting Values?: Edith Wharton's
New Year's Day," Sarah Emsley, Dalhousie University
Thursday, noon to 1:15 p.m. Lunch
Young Building, Salve Regina University
Thursday, 1:30 to 2:00 p.m., Session III (Plenary)
"Report from the Mount," Scott Marshall, Edith
Wharton Restoration
Thursday, 2:15 p.m. to 3:15 p.m., Session IV
Panel A, Rereading Wharton's Ghosts
Chair: TBA
"Edith Wharton and the Ghost of Poe: 'Miss Mary Pask' and 'Mr. Jones,'"
John Getz, Xavier University
"Uncovering the Veil: Writing, Rupture, and 'Pomegranate
Seed,'" James A. Miller, University of Missouri, Columbia
Panel B, Wharton's Poetry
Chair: Barbara Comins, LaGuardia
Community College, City University of New York
"Rereading Wharton's Poetry," Bette Weidman, Queens
College, City University of New York
"Wharton's Early Poetry," Katharine Rodier, Marshall
University
Panel C, Architecture and Illumination
Chair: TBA
"Counterculture in Wharton's Newport: the Gilded
Age and the Aesthetic Cult of the Beautiful," Mary W. Blanchard, Rutgers
University
"100-Watt Wharton: Electric Lighting in The House
of Mirth," Peter Betjemann, Princeton University
Panel D, Edith Wharton & Book Culture: Serial
Reading and Publishing History
Chair: Sharon Shaloo, Massachusetts
Center for the Book
"Interruption and Interpretation: A Serial Reading
Lesson," conference participant
"Editing Wharton: Understanding the History Behind
The Custom of the Country and Implications for Literary Criticism,
Karen Wikander, University of Oxford, UK
Thursday, 3:30 to 5:00 p.m., Session V
Panel A, Touring Wharton's Gardens
Chair: TBA
"The Garden as Setting and Metaphor in Edith Wharton's Short Fiction,"
Jean F. Blackall, Cornell University
(Emeritus)
"Edith Wharton and American Summer Resorts," Sharon
L. Dean, Rivier College
"Far Eastern Influence in Beatrix Farrand's Resort
Landscape Architecture," Daniel Bratton, Miyazaki International
College, Japan
Panel B, Edith Wharton and the Other Arts: Music,
Painting, and Photography
Chair: Meredith Goldsmith, Mary
Washington College
"Edith Wharton and Music," conference participant
"Impressionism and The Reef," Maureen Honey,
University of Nebraska, Lincoln
"Wharton's Pictorial Sense," Dale Flynn, University
of California, Davis
Panel C, Edith Wharton's Men: In the Berkshires
and at War
Chair: Harriet Gold, LaSalle College,
Quebec, Canada
"Wharton's Sexual Education in Ethan Frome and
Summer," Eiko Tanaka, Osaka Aoyama Junior College,
Japan
"'I Know We Can Fetch It': Ethan Frome's Assertion
of Self-Identity," Kenneth J. Rayes, University of New
Orleans
"The Strength to Speak: Edith Wharton and A Son
at the Front," David L. Gugin, Northern Illinois University
Panel D, Literary Successors
Chair: Carol Hill, New York City
"'Outrageous Trap': Jealousy in Fitzgerald's 'Bernice
Bobs Her Hair' and Wharton's 'Roman Fever,'" Barbara Comins, LaGuardia
Community College, City University of New York
"Lily Bart Reborn: Mrs. Dalloway as Virginia
Woolf's Revision of The House of Mirth," Kathy Fedorko, Middlesex
County College
"'The absorbed observation of her own symptoms':
Ethan Frome and Anne Sexton's 'The Break,'" Jo Gill, Cheltenham
and Gloucester College of Higher Education, UK
"Newland's Newport: From Wharton to Scorsese," Angel
Otero Blanco and conference participant, Universidad de
Santiago de Compostela, Spain
Thursday, 5:00 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.
Dinner on Own
Thursday, 7: 30 p.m. Evening Program
Ballroom and Library, Young Building
7:30 p.m. "The Twilight of the God," a staged reading, Salve Regina
Theatre Department
Patricia Hawkridge, Salve
Regina University
Alan F. Hawkridge, Guest Artist
Helen Lopes, Guest Artist
Greg Luzitano, Salve Regina University
9:00 p.m. "An Evening with Edith Wharton," a one-woman performance by Barbara Becker, Wilmette, IL
Friday, June 23, 2000 top
Friday, 9:00 a.m. to 10:30 a.m., Session VI
Panel A: Edith Wharton's Debate with Modernism
Chair: Karin Jackson, University
of Maine at Augusta
"Divorce and the Modernist Self in Twilight Sleep,"
Jennifer A. Haytock, University of North Carolina, Chapel
Hill
"Edith Wharton's Argument with Modernism: Hudson
River Bracketed and The Gods Arrive," Stephanie Lewis Thompson,
University of Tennessee, Knoxville
"A Question of Style: An Examination of the Artist
in the Work of Edith Wharton and James Joyce," Sharon R. Kehl, University
of New Hampshire
Panel B: Market Theories and Market Strategies
Chair: Harold Lawber, Salve Regina
University
"The Manner of the Marketplace: Edith Wharton as
a Race Writer," Augusta Rohrbach, Bunting Institute, Harvard
University
"Gifts, Poison, and Legal Stealing in Edith Wharton's
Fiction," Hildegard Hoeller, Babson College
"New Year's Day: A Backward Glance at Marriage,
Money, and Women's Sexuality in the Gilded Age," Beth Fisher, University
of Iowa
Panel C: Fictions of Imprisonment and Escape
Chair: Sr. Patricia Combies, Salve
Regina University
"Wharton's Romantic Prisons: Saints, Sinners, and
Sultans," Annette L. Benert, Allentown College of St.
Francis de Sales
"'Imprisoned--Yet So Free!': Edith Wharton and the
Consequent Life," Renee Tursi, Columbia University
"Exit Strategies in The Age of Innocence," Carol
Singley, Rutgers University, Camden
Panel D: Contextualizing Wharton in the Classroom:
Connecting an Imagined Past to-- and for--Students of the Future
Chair: Paul Ady, Assumption College
"Pedagogical Challenges: Explicating the Dissonances
of Social Class in Teaching Edith Wharton," Ann Murphy, Assumption
College
"Seeing Edith Wharton's Gothic Legacy: Ghosts Stories
in the Wake of War," Becky DiBiasio, Assumption College
"Building a Foundation for The House of Mirth,"
Lucia Z. Knoles, Assumption College
"Using Technology to Wharton," Paul Ady
Friday, 10:45 a.m. to 12:15 p.m., Session VII
Panel A: Contemporary Perspectives: Primitivism
and Post-Colonialism
Chair: Katherine Leary Lawber, Salve
Regina University
"Colonial Anxieties: Wharton's 'The Seed of Faith'
and 'A Bottle of Perrier,'" Charlotte Rich, Eastern Kentucky
University
"Looking Askance at the Vogue in the Primitive:
Wharton and the Highbrow Side of the Harlem Renaissance," Anne MacMaster,
Millsaps College
"Between Historicism and Primitivism: The Ambiguities
of The Age of Innocence," Michael Nowlin, University
of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
Panel B: Masks, the Gaze, and Letters: Tropes
of the Postmodern
Chair: Denise Witzig, Saint Mary's
College
"Lily Bart and Fin-de-Siécle Female Masquerade,"
Maureen Newlin, California State University, San Bernardino
"If Looks Could Kill: Medusa and the Homoerotic
Gaze of 'The Eyes,'" Susan Elizabeth Sweeney, Holy Cross
College
"Bodies of Evidence: Sex, Death, and Text in Edith
Wharton," Denise Witzig
Panel C: Marking Time in Edith Wharton's Texts
Chair: Mark Eaton, Oklahoma City
University
"The Biological Clock: Wharton, Naturalism, and
the Temporality of Womanhood," Jennifer Fleissner, University
of California, Los Angeles
"'The perpetually reminding tick of disciplined
clocks': New York Standard Time in The House of Mirth and The
Age of Innocence, Jennifer Swift, State University
of New York, Buffalo
"Realist Time: Wharton, Narrative, and Early Cinema,"
Alice Maurice, registration pending
Panel D: "'We are pleased to announce the engagement
of . . .': Edith Wharton, Scholars, and Students, a roundtable discussion
about teaching"
Chair: Margaret P. Murray, Western
Connecticut State University
Kristin O. Lauer, Fordham University
Mary Carney, University of Georgia
Linda Costanzo Cahir, Centenary
College
Friday, 12:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.
Lunch on Own
NHS Tour Schedule (see conference
folder for individual reservations):
Bus Tour 1:30 p.m.
Walking Tours 2:30 to 5:30 p.m.
Other Tours (Preservation Society/Viking
Boat/Bus Tours, etc.) arranged on own.
Information available at conference registration
Dinner on Own
Friday, 8:00 p.m. Performance:
Music from Wharton's Newport
Remainder of evening TBA
Saturday, June 24, 2000 top
Saturday, 9:00 a.m. to 10:30 a.m., Session VIII
Panel A: The House of Mirth: More Uncoverings
Chair: Augusta Rohrbach, Bunting
Institute, Harvard University
"Designing Our Interiors: Self-Consciousness and
Social Awareness in The House of Mirth," Jill M. Kress, St.
John Fisher College
"The Vision-Building Faculty: Lily Bart and the
Specter of Heritability," Laura Saltz, Harvard University
"New Woman, Painted Woman, or Sentimental Heroine?:
Re-reading Lily Bart, Gender, and Domesticity in Turn-of-the-Century America,"
Nancy Von Rosk, University of New Hampshire, Durham
Panel B: Contextualizing Fruit of the Tree
Chair: Elsa Nettels, College of
William and Mary
"'Is it ever right to speed the departing sick?':
Euthanasia circa 1906," Irene Goldman-Price, Penn State
University, Hazleton
"'To bring her face to face with her people': Women,
Ownership, and Power in Edith Wharton's The Fruit of the Tree,"
Melissa McFarland Pennell, University of Massachusetts,
Lowell
"Drugs and Drug Use in Wharton's The Fruit of
the Tree," Alan Price, Penn State University, Hazleton
Panel C: Looking Forward: New Perspectives on
The Age of Innocence
Chair: Jennifer Greeson, Yale University
"Edith Wharton and Colonial Discourse," conference
participant
"'To read these pages is to live again': Wharton's
Quest for Accuracy in The Age of Innocence," Julia Ehrhardt, Honors
College, University of Oklahoma
"The Tradition of the Patriarch's Ball and the Dance
of Matrifocal Power in The Age of Innocence," Candace Waid, University
of California, Santa Barbara
Panel D: The Children: Legal Fathers, Modern
Mothers, and Gender Constructions
Chair: TBA
"Summer and The Children: Edith Wharton's
Love Letters to Her Father," Deborah Scaperoth, University
of Tennessee, Knoxville
"Wharton's 'Children' in The Mother's Recompense
and The Children," Richard A. Iadonisi, Grand
Valley State University
"The Construction of Masculinity in Wharton's The
Children," Dean Casale, Kean University
Saturday, 10:45 a.m. to 12:15 p.m., Session IX
Panel A: Edith Wharton and Italy
Chair: Sarah Bird Wright,
Midlothian, VA
"'The Bunner Sisters' and Aldo Palazzeschi's 'Sorelle
Materassi,'" Gianfranca Balestra, University of Siena,
Italy
"From Newport to Marrakesch: Wharton's Landscape
through Venetian Painters," Rosella Mamoli Zorzi, University
of Venice, Italy
"The Voices of Time: Edith Wharton and Vernon Lee
in the Twentieth Century," Penelope Vita-Finzi, London,
England, UK
"The Pictorial Imagination of the Renaissance in
Late 18th-Century Italy in The Valley of Decision," conference
participant
Panel B: The Women in Edith Wharton's War Writing
Chair, Julie Olin-Ammentorp, Le
Moyne College
"A Woman at the Front," Sarah de Bienville, New
York City
"Women, War, and Witness: Edith Wharton's 'Writing
a War Story,'" Julie A. Haurykiewicz, Binghampton University
"The Nurse, the Abortionist, and the Missionary:
Medical Women in Wharton's Wartime Prose," Frederick Wegener, California
State University, Long Beach
Panel C: The New Woman and the Fin de Siécle
Chair: TBA
"The Portrait of a Wo/man," Nancy Boemo, Little
York, NJ
"Dead Hands, Speaking Hands, and Velvet Gloves:
Female Artistic Agency in Wharton," Emily J. Orlando, University
of Maryland, College Park
"The Spaces of the New Woman in Wharton's The
Fruit of the Tree," Teresa Tavares, Universidade de
Coimbra, Portugal
Panel D: Edith Wharton and Science: Resistance
and Embrace
Chair: TBA
"Who Owns Our Bodies?: Wharton's Exploration of
Medical Treatment and Euthanasia in The Fruit of the Tree," Ann
Maioroff, Palomar College
"'The Pang of the Sociologist': Science and Social
Criticism in The Custom of the Country," Paul Ohler, University
of British Columbia, Canada
"'Body-room' and 'Soul-room': The Female Body, Modern
Technology, and Wharton's 'Inner Life' in Twilight Sleep," Deborak
Zak, Northern Illinois University
Saturday, 12:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m.
Lunch on Own
NHS Tour Schedule (individual
reservations in conference folder):
Bus Tour 1:30 p.m.
Walking Tours 3:00 to 5:30 p.m.
Other Tours (Preservation Society/Viking
Boat/Bus Tours, etc.) arranged on own
Information at conference registration
Saturday, 6:00 p.m. to 10 p.m.
6:00 p.m., Cocktail Reception
Grand Hall, Ochre Court, Salve Regina University
7:00 p.m., Banquet Dinner
Ochre Court (Note: Dress is "resort evening," and
not formal)
8:30 p.m. Closing Night Program
Closing Remarks:
Salve Regina and Edith Wharton Society
Conference Directors
Keynote Address:
"The Imagination for Place," Shari Benstock, University
of Miami
Sunday, June 25, 2000 top
9:00 to 10: 15 a.m., Session X
Roundtable Discussion: Edith Wharton Abroad
Chair: Daniel Bratton, Miyazaki
International College, Japan
"Edith Wharton in Japan," Yoshiko Okoso, Waseda
University, Japan
"Japanese Student Responses to Wharton," Daniel
Bratton
"Teaching Wharton in Germany," Reiner Kornetta,
Pedagogische Hochschule Ludwigsburg, Germany
Other panelists to be announced
10: 15 to 10:45 a.m. Morning Coffee
10:45 to 12 noon, Session IX:
Roundtable Discussion: "What's Next in Wharton
Studies?"
Chair: Annette Zilversmit, Long
Island University
Abby Werlock, St. Olaf College
Julie Olin-Ammentorp, Le Moyne
College
Frederick Wegener, Calif. State
College, Long Beach
Donna Campbell, Gonzaga University
Linda Costanzo Cahir, Centenary
College
Hildegard Hoeller, Babson College
Carole Shaffer-Koros, Kean University
Noon -- Conference Farewell