Edith Wharton at Newport: 2000

"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--

Wednesday, June 21, 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