The 14th International Willa Cather Seminar 2013
Hosted by Northern Arizona University and the Willa Cather Foundation  "Willa Cather: Canyon, Rock, & Mesa Country"
Flagstaff, AZ June 16-22, 2013 Seminar Directors: Ann Moseley, Professor Emerita Texas A&M University-Commerce
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John J. Murphy, Professor Emeritus Brigham Young University
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Robert Thacker, Professor St. Lawrence University
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Set in the locale of Willa Cather's pivotal 1912 visit to the Southwest, the 14th International Willa Cather Seminar will highlight the places that inspired Cather, like her protagonist Thea Kronborg, to develop a new understanding and expression of her art. The seminar will include excursions to the following sites: -Walnut Canyon (Panther Canyon in The Song of the Lark) -The Little Painted Desert (over which Cather rode with Julio) -Winslow, Arizona (where Cather stayed in 1912 with her brother Douglass and H.L. Tooker, the prototype for Ray Kennedy in The Song of the Lark), and luncheon at the "Fred Harvey" La Posada Hotel -The Museum of Northern Arizona (which houses excellent Sinagua and Anasazi pottery collections) Call for Papers will be issued in the spring of 2012. Suggested topics will include exploration of the effect of Cather's 1912 Southwestern trip on her life and art; discussions of the significance of canyons, rocks, and mesas in Cather's work; studies of music, art, architecture, ritual, and religion in Cather's work; gender and racial issues, especially as related to Cather's Southwestern works; and approaches to teaching Cather.
The 13th International Willa Cather Seminar 2011Hosted by Smith College and the Willa Cather Foundation "Cather and the Nineteenth Century"
Smith College, Northampton, MA
June 20-25, 2011
Co-directors: Anne L. Kaufmanand Rick Millington
Detailed Schedule:
Monday afternoon, June 20
Check in/registration: King/Scales Dormitory
4:30 p.m. Opening reception in Neilson library, 3rd floor gallery, the site of "Willa Cather: A Retrospective." This exhibit of editions of Cather's works and Cather-related materials from the Mortimer Rare Book Room, the Sophia Smith Collection, the College Archives, and the collection of David Porter was curated by Emily Saer Cook, Smith College Class of 2011.
6:00 p.m. - 7:00 p.m. Dinner (King/Scales dining room)
7:30 - 9:00 p.m. Plenary Session 1, Stoddard Hall Auditorium
Welcome: Marilyn R. Schuster, Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities and Provost/Dean of the Faculty, Smith College
Susan N. Maher, Dean, College of the Liberal Arts, University of Minnesota Duluth and President of the Board of Governors, the Willa Cather Foundation
Session 1:
"Cather, Dickinson, and Sexuality," Marilee Lindemann and Martha Nell Smith, University of Maryland
"Willa Cather, Sarah Orne Jewett, and the Historiography of Lesbian Sexuality," Melissa Homestead, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Tuesday, June 21
7:15 a.m. - 8:30 a.m. Breakfast
9:00 - 10:30 a.m. Plenary Session 2, Stoddard Hall Auditorium
Chair
"Daughter of a War Lost, Won, and Evaded: Cather and the Ambiguities of Memory Work," Janis Stout, Texas A&M University
"Myra Henshawe: An Unmodern Woman in a Modernist Text," Michael Peterman, Trent University
11:00-12:30 Concurrent Session 1
Session A: Questions of Place in Cather's Fiction (Seelye xxx)
Chair, Derek Driedger, Dakota Wesleyan University
"Sacrifice, Place, Modernity in Willa Cather's Fiction," Leila Nadir, Wellesley College
"Heterotopia in Inventing the Self: The American Southwest in Willa Cather's Imagination," Martha J. Despain, U.S. Air Force Academy
"Women on the Land in Cather, Red Shirt, Deloria, and Napesni," Mary Henson, Sinte Gleska University
Session B: Cather and the Nineteenth-Century Novel (Seelye xxx)
Chair, Ann Moseley, Texas A&M University-Commerce
"Found Drowned: Feeling Lonely, Reading Eliot. The Mill on the Floss to Lucy Gayheart," Shellie Sclan, Independent Scholar
"'I Only Want Impossible Things': Thea and Alice in Wonderland," Michelle E. Moore, The College of DuPage
"Lost Ladies: Frances Hodgson Burnett's Through One Administration," Susan Maher, University of Minnesota, Duluth
Session C: Cather and Nineteenth-Century Cultural Formations (Seelye xxx)
Chair, Mark Robison, Union College
"Realism, Modernism, and the ‘New Museum': Cather and the Aesthetics of the Artifact," Laura Edwards Gordon, University of Maryland
"Cather and Heroic Vitalism: The Norse Component," Sherrill Harbison, University of Massachusetts Amherst
"'Out of the Pages of Jesse James': My Antonia and Western Manhood," Catherine Holmes, College of Charleston
12:30 p.m.--1:30 p.m. Lunch
1:45-3:15 Plenary Session 3, Stoddard Hall Auditorium
Chair,
"Cather, Horatio Alger, and Success: Making It (or Not) in Victorian and Modern America, Guy J. Reynolds, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
"'Sharp and Unexpected Flashes': Willa Cather from the Archives," Andrew Jewell, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
3:15-3:30 break
3:30-5:00 Concurrent Session 2
Session A: Cather and her Precursors: James and Wharton (Seelye xxx)
Chair, Kari Ronning, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
"Willa Cather and the Example of Henry James," Elsa Nettels, College of William and Mary
"What Willa Cather Might Have Said to Henry James," Kimberly Vanderlaan, Trinity Valley School, Fort Worth, TX
"Daisy, Lily, and Marian: Cather Revises Henry James and Edith Wharton," Julie Olin-Ammentorp, Le Moyne College
Session B: Gender and Sexuality (Seelye xxx)
Chair, Susan A. Schiller, Central Michigan University
"Wolves as Witnesses: Validation and Annihilation of Queer Families in My Antonia and The Professor's House," Arden Eli Hill, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
"Out of the Mother and into the Male Lover: Willa Cather's Impersonal Intimacy," Peter Nagy, Lehigh University
"Marie Tovesky and the Construction of Femininity in O Pioneers!," Carmen McCue, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Session C: One of Ours
Chair, Susan Maher, University of Minnesota, Duluth
"One of Ours as Willa Cather's Red Badge of Courage," Ann Moseley, Texas A&M University-Commerce
"Mapping Agency: Geography and Naturalism in One of Ours," Anne Baker, North Carolina State University
"Fact and Fiction in One of Ours: Enid Royce and Myrtle Bartlett Cather," Rebecca Faber, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
5:30 p.m.-7:00 p.m. Dinner
7:30 p.m. Sue Miller, "Seeing Through Cather," Stoddard Hall Auditorium
Wednesday, June 22
7:15 a.m.-8:30 a.m. Breakfast
9:00 - 10:30 a.m. Plenary Session 4, Stoddard Hall Auditorium
"Retreats and Revisions: Willa Cather's Nineteenth Century," Ann Romines, George Washington University
"Cather's Jewett, Jewett's Cather," Deborah Carlin, University of Massachusetts Amherst
10:45-12:15 Concurrent Session 3
Session A: Cather and her Precursors: Jewett and Wharton
Chair, Mark Madigan, Nazareth College
"Medical Feminism: Healing, Art, and Ambition in A Country Doctor and The Life of Mary Baker Eddy & the History of Christian Science," Joshua Dolezal, Central College
"Willa Cather's Contradictory Response to Jewett's Legacy," Neelee Glasco, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
"Social Networking at the Fin de Siecle: The Crisis of Courtship in Cather and Wharton," Charmion Gustke, Belmont University
Session B: The Aesthetic Impulse in Cather's Fiction
Chair, Julie Olin-Ammentorp, Le Moyne College
"Memory and Image: A Graphemics for a New Frontier Ideal in My Antonia, Joyce Kessler, The Cleveland Institute of Art
"Willa Cather and the Arts and Crafts Aesthetic," Elaine Smith, University of South Florida
"Decorations, Furnishings, and Lumber: Cather's House of Fiction Reconsidered," Geneva M. Gano, Indiana University
Session C: The Uses of the Past in Cather's Fiction
Chair, Robert Thacker
"Was the Past a Foreign Country to Willa Cather?" Evelyn Haller, Doane College
"Balancing the Scales: Euclide Auclair's Life and Materia Medica," Jeanne C. Collins, Independent Scholar
"The Solitary Woman and La Recluse: Emily Dickinson and Cather's Shadows on the Rock," Angela Conrad, Bloomfield College
Session D: Cather and her Precursors: Howells and Howe
Chair, Michael Peterman, Trent University
"Character, Personality, and the Entrepreneur: William Dean Howells's Fulkerson and Willa Cather's Tom Outland," Matthew Lavin, University of Iowa
"The Rise of Godfrey St. Peter: Cather's Modernism and the Howellsian Pretext," Joseph C. Murphy, Fu Jen Catholic University
"Murder in the Rural Midwest: E.W. Howe, Willa Cather, and Late-Nineteenth-Century Literary Expectations," Derek Driedger, Dakota Wesleyan University
12:15 p.m.-1:30 p.m. Lunch
1:30-3:00 Plenary Session 5, Stoddard Hall Auditorium
Chair,
"'One Knows It Too Well to Know It Well': Willa Cather's A Shropshire Lad," Robert Thacker, St. Lawrence University
"The Kingdom of Culture: Culture, Ethnology, and the ‘Feeling of Empire' in The Song of the Lark," Eric Aronoff, Michigan State University
3-3:30 break
3:30-5 Concurrent Session 4
Session A: Sapphira and the Slave Girl
Chair, Ann Romines, George Washington University
"A [Slave] Girl's Life in Virginia before the War: Willa Cather and Antebellum Nostalgia," John Jacobs, Shenandoah University
"Territories of Affiliation: Foreignness and Belonging in Sapphira and the Slave Girl," Emily Izenstein, Northwestern University
"Recovering Nancy's Voice in Sapphira and the Slave Girl, Margaret A. Johnson, Tennessee Tech University
Session B: Deep Structures-Social, Ideological, Psychological-in Cather's Fiction
Chair, Florence Amamoto, Gustavus Adolphus College
"Social Class within Cather's Writing," Summer Dickinson, York College
"The is Not a Plough: Resisting Authenticity in My Antonia," Harry F. Thompson, Augustana College
"Writing the Uncanny at the ‘Bright Edges of the World,'" John Swift, Occidental College
Session C: The Professor's House
Chair, Joshua Dolezal, Central College
"Primitivism in The Professor's House and Forster's A Passage to India," Rich Hoeckh, Independent Scholar
"No Artist is an Island: Where Domesticity and Inspiration Intersect in The Professor's House," Allison P. Palumbo, University of Kentucky
"Class, Labor, and the Body in The Professor's House," Sarah E. Clere, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Session D: Influences and Conversations
Chair, Timothy Bintrim, St. Francis University
"A New England Revelation," Marvin Friedman, Independent Scholar
"The Correspondence of Willa Cather and the Czech Philosopher-President Tomas Masaryk," Evelyn I. Funda, Utah State University
"Bernhardt vs. Duse: Passion and Reason in Cather's Fiction," Isabella Caruso, City University of New York
5:30 p.m.-7:00 p.m. Dinner
7:30 p.m. Nina Baym, "On the Trail of Western Women Writers" Stoddard Hall Auditorium
Thursday, June 23 7:15 a.m.-8:15 a.m. Breakfast
8:30-10:00 a.m. (Please Note Earlier Start) Plenary Session 6, Stoddard Hall Auditorium
Chair,
"'Paestum': An Unpublished Poem from Cather's Grand Tour of Italy," Mark Madigan, Nazareth College
"Thackeray's Henry Esmond: Literary Prototypes for My Mortal Enemy," Richard Harris, The Webb Institute
10:15 Board bus for Jaffrey, New Hampshire, in front of King-Scales Dormitory
Boxed lunch, to be picked up at King dining hall
Tour of Cather-Lewis gravesite
Lunch (outdoors) at the home of fellow Seminarian Gene Pokorny
1:15 Memorial tribute to James Woodress, Historic Jaffrey Meetinghouse
Coordinated by Guy Reynolds, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
2:00 Visit to site of My Antonia writing tent and Shattuck Inn (weather permitting)
2:20 Buses return to Northampton
4-5:30 Plenary Session 7, Stoddard Hall Auditorium
"Cather in the Classroom," an interactive session sponsored by Teaching Cather
Panelists:
Steven B. Shively, Utah State University, Chair
Florence Amamoto, Gustavus Adolphus College
Joshua Dolezal, Central College
Evelyn I. Funda, Utah State University
Mark Robison, Union College
Dinner on your own in Northampton (Recommendations provided)
Friday, June 24
7:15 a.m.-8:30 a.m. Breakfast
9:00-10:30 a.m. Concurrent Session 6
Session A: Cather's Fiction and Popular Culture
Chair, Melissa Homestead, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
"From Sentimentality to Sex: The Circus Motif in Willa Cather's Fiction," Steven B. Shively, Utah State University
"Gone with the Wind?: Willa Cather and Writing Slavery in the Shadow of Popular Culture," Michael Schueth, Collin College
"Cather's Readers, Traditionalism, and Modern America," Charles Johanningsmeier, University of Nebraska-Omaha
Session B: Cather's Fiction and Nineteenth-Century Literary Forms
Chair, Geneva M. Gano, Indiana University
"Making It New: O Pioneers! as Modernist Bildungsroman," Sarah Stoeckl, University of Oregon
"Letting Go of ‘The Old Beauty': Cather's Vexed Relationship to the Nineteenth Century," Mark Robison, Union College
Session C: Cather's Fiction and the Eras of Selfhood
Chair, John Swift, Occidental College
"Caught between the Truth and the Lie: The Dependence of the Split Subject on the Arousal of Desire in Alexander's Bridge," Elisabeth Bayley, Catholic University Leuven, Belgium
"'The thing is, to go right on living': Old Age in Cather's Works," Margaret Doane, California State University, San Bernardino
10:45-12:15 Concurrent Session 7
Session A: Philosophical Resonances of Cather's Fiction
Chair, Eric Aronoff, Michigan State University
"Godfrey St. Peter's Crisis: ataraxia and eros in The Professor's House," Matthew Hokum, Fairmont State University
"Bondage and Liberation in The Professor's House," Nalini Bhushan, Smith College
"Cather's Study of William James and her Response to his Account of Tough and Tender-Minded Tendencies," Patrick Dooley, St. Bonaventure University
Session B: Cather and ‘Local' Literary Contexts
Chair, Matthew Lavin, University of Iowa
"'Female Reporters of Uncertain Ages': Cather among the Newswomen of Nineteenth-Century Pittsburgh," Robin Cadwallader and Timothy Bintrim, Saint Francis University
"Willa Cather, McClure's Magazine, and "The Problems of Suicide," Will Holmes, Occidental College
Session C: The Music of Cather's Fiction
Chair, Richard Harris, The Webb Institute
"Wotan's Farewell: Wagner's Ring Cycle, A Lost Lady, and The Professor's House, J. Gerard Dollar, Siena College
"Lucy Gayheart: Remembrance of Music Past," David Porter, Skidmore College
12:00 p.m.-1:30 p.m. Lunch
1:30-3:00 Plenary Session 8, Stoddard Hall Auditorium
Chair,
"Jamesian Affinities in Vintage Cather," John J. Murphy, Brigham Young University
"Willa Cather, Edith Wharton, and Pure Water," Susan L. Meyer, Wellesley College
3:30- 5:00 Concurrent Session 8
Session A: Iconic Women
Chair, Joseph C. Murphy, Fu Jen Catholic University
"'City of Feeling,' ‘City of Fact': Cather's New Women at Work in the City," Amber Harris Leichner, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
"'The loveliest of all their sex': Vestiges of the Gibson Girl in Willa Cather's Fiction," Frances Zauhar, University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown
Session B: Cather and fin de siècle Culture
Chair, Andrew Jewell, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
"Willa Cather's Troll Garden and Aestheticism," Sarah Cheney Watson, East Texas Baptist University
"Body Work: Manet, Zorn, and a Case Study of Cather's Proto-Modernist Aesthetics in The Song of the Lark," Linsday Mennenga, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
"'The hurried, hectic life': Cather and the End of the Nineteenth Century," Kari Ronning, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Session C: The Far Reach of Education in the Novels of Willa Cather
Chair, Guy Reynolds, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
"The Reception of the Classics in Willa Cather: Ahead of her Time in Looking at the Past," Sean Lake, Seton Hall University
"Fugitive Reading in Sapphira and the Slave Girl," Joy Bracewell, Unversity of Georgia
"The Hope of Education within Cather's Novels," Susan A. Schiller, Central Michigan University (Panel Organizer)
5:00-6:00 Pre-Banquet Reception, Scales Living Room
6:00 p.m. Banquet, King Dining Hall
followed by a performance of
Aaron Copland, 12 Poems of Emily Dickinson
Sarah Bach, soprano, and Emily Murphy, pianist
King Living Room
Saturday, June 25
7:15-8:30 Breakfast and goodbyes
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