Please join us for the international conference of the Edith Wharton Society in Florence, Italy, celebrating the sesquicentennial of Wharton’s birth. “Edith Wharton in Florence” will be the third Wharton Society conference held in Europe and the first in Italy. The conference directors seek papers focusing on all aspects of Wharton’s work, and we especially welcome submissions dealing with the international contexts of her writing.
Papers might offer readings of any of Wharton’s texts, including the following:
- Short fiction, poetry, plays, essays, and travel writing, in addition to the novels;
- Wharton’s work in relation to any of its nineteenth- and twentieth-century contexts;
- Wharton in a transatlantic literary context;
- Wharton and her contemporaries, both male and female, canonical and non-canonical, European and American;
- Wharton in Italy, Morocco, and elsewhere in Europe;
- Wharton and the other arts, including painting, photography, theatre, and film (adaptations of her work during her lifetime and those that have appeared more recently);
- Wharton and cosmopolitanism, globalization, and the various forces of modernity;
- Wharton and art history.
All theoretical approaches welcome, including feminist, psychoanalytic, historicist, marxist, queer, and ecocritical, among others.
Through the generosity of Marist College, the conference will be held at Marist’s Lorenzo di Medici campus, in the heart of Florence. In addition to panels, there will be a keynote speaker and opportunities for tours of the area. Conference venue: http://www.marist.edu/academics/italy/ldm.html
Please submit 250-500-word abstracts and brief CV to EdithWhartoninFlorence2012@gmail.com by 15 July 2011.
All conference participants must be members of the Edith Wharton Society
at the time of registration.
For more information about the conference, contact Conference Directors
Meredith Goldsmith (Ursinus College; mgoldsmith@ursinus.edu) and
Emily Orlando (Fairfield University; eorlando@fairfield.edu).