Eudora Welty Society Conference--Academic Panels Thurs 2.21

The Eudora Welty Society conference “'The Continuous Thread of Revelation': Eudora Welty Reconsidered" is February 21 to 23, 2019 at the College of Charleston. Over 40 scholars will present papers on Welty's fiction, photography, memoir, archival materials, and more. Thursday panels: Stern Center Ballroom. Friday and Saturday panels: EHHP Alumni Hall. 

Please register here for each day you would like to attend. No charge to C of C faculty, staff, and students. Others who wish to attend may register online for the entire conference or pay a prorated daily rate in person at the registration table. 

Click the links below to register individually for evening events, also free to C of C community. 


Thurs 2.21 5:30-7:30, Stern Center Ballroom Charleston Writers Discuss Their Beginnings

Fri 2.22 6-7:30, EHHP Alumni Center "Moon Lake" Dramatic Reading

Sat 2.23 5:00-6:30, Randolph Hall, Closing Roundtable


Thursday 2.21 12:15-1:30 Memory, Time, Confluence, Crossroads   [Chair, Harriet Pollack, College of Charleston]


Burning the Breadboard: A New Approach to The Optimist's Daughter. Peter Schmidt, Swarthmore College

 Welty’s “Circe” and the Original Time’s Up. Dawn Trouard, University of Central Florida

“The Burning”: Memory, Myopia, and Mirrors. Alex Werrell, Yale University

Confluence and/or Crossroads. David McWhirter, Texas A&M University


Thurs 1:45- 3:00 Welty, her Contemporaries, and Later Artists     [Chair, Julia Eichelberger, College of Charleston]


 Welty and Tennessee Williams. Gary Richards, University of Mary Washington

 “The Pulse of Today”: Berenice Abbott and Eudora Welty. Annette Trefzer, University of Mississippi

 Confluences of Isak Dinesen and Eudora Welty. Pearl McHaney, Georgia State University

 Literary Friendships: Katherine Anne Porter and Eudora Welty. Mae Miller Claxton, Western Carolina University


Thurs 3:15-4:00 Welty and Later Artists   [Chair, Tom McHaney, Georgia State University]


 Mississippi Sounds: Welty and Jesmyn Ward in Harmony. Maria Mackas, Georgia State University

 Reading Welty’s Photographs in the Dark Room of Race: Spectographia and the ‘Series of Exchange’ in Welty and the Art of Glenn Ligon. Randall Wilhelm, Anderson University


Thurs 4:15-5:15 Reconsidering Welty’s Humor       [Chair, Jo Ellyn Clarey, Greater Grand Rapids Women's History Council]


The Beauty Parlor as Comic Cauldron in “Petrified Man” and Steel Magnolias. John Lowe, University of Georgia 

Leota’s Worry. Sharon Deykin Baris, Bar Ilan University                                                                           

Welty’s Comedy: The Continuous Process of Revelation. Lois M. Welch, University of Montana


Thurs 2.21 5:30-7:30, Stern Center Ballroom Charleston Writers Discuss Their Beginnings [Please click link to register]

Friday 10:15-11:30 Using the Eudora Welty Collection at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History: A Roundtable   [Chair, Julia Eichelberger, College of Charleston]


Forrest Galey & Betty Uzman, Mississippi Department of Archives and History  

Julia Eichelberger, Mary Scott Gilbert, Stella Rounsefell, College of Charleston


Fri 1:15-2:45 Welty and Mystery [Chair: Jacob Agner, University of Mississippi]


Eudora Welty’s Career in Mystery Fiction. Harriet Pollack, College of Charleston

Chester Himes, Harper Lee, Eudora Welty: The Civil Rights Movement on a Crime Fiction Continuum. Jacob Agner, University of Mississippi

M**der, Mystery, and Motivation: Eudora Welty’s The Optimist’s Daughter and Agatha Christie’s The Body in the Library. Sarah Ford, Baylor University

Wanted Dead or Alive: Last Year’s Dead Branches. Rebecca Mark, Tulane University

“The Writer as Detective Hero”: Eudora Welty and Her Late Fiction. Suzanne Marrs, Millsaps College


Fri 3:00-4:15 Reconsidering Welty & Place [Chair, Stephen Fuller, Middle Georgia University]


Eudora Welty and the House of Fiction. Michael Pickard, Millsaps College

Welty at the University of Cambridge: Beginnings of “Place in Fiction.” Debra Dobkins, Brenau University

The Soundscape of The Golden Apples: The Beat of Time and the Melody. Matthew D. Sutton, East Tennessee State University

Precarious Memory: The Mississippi Lunatic Asylum. Keri Watson, University of Central Florida


Fri 4:30-5:30 Teaching Welty in the High School Classroom: A Student/Teacher Roundtable [Chair, Rebecca Harrison, University of West Georgia]


Paisley Sloan Burklow, Morgan Murphy, Susie Chestnut Sewell, Abigail Smith, and Arielle Vaughan, University of West Georgia


Fri 2.22 6-7:30, EHHP Alumni Center "Moon Lake" Dramatic Reading

10:00-11:30 Welty on Gender: Femininity, Subversion, and Escape EHHP Alumni Center, 86 Wentworth St

Chair: Peggy Prenshaw, Millsaps College


 Women!! Make Husband in Own Home!: Welty’s Use of Sewing as Subversive Practice.   Monica Miller, Middle Georgia University

“A lady couldn’t expect to travel without a hat”: Disembodied Cultural Capital, Gender, and Sexuality in Welty’s Short Fiction. Laura Patterson, Seton Hill University

“All new things in life were meant to come like that”: Women’s Mobility in Welty’s Fiction. Allison Rittmayer, Northwestern Louisiana State University

“The birds that flew were caged . . . and could not fly out”: Delta Wedding and the Politics of Travel, Khirsten Doolan, University of Louisiana at Lafayette

The Post Office and the Pedestal: Sexual Tyranny in Welty’s Fiction. Donnie McMahand and Kevin Murphy, Towson University


 11:45-12:45 Welty, Gender, and Craft EHHP Alumni Center, 86 Wentworth St [Chair, Pearl McHaney, Georgia State University]


The Experimental Welty: Eudora’s Forms Realize the Novel. Candace Waid, University of California, Santa Barbara

Revisions and Revelation in A Curtain of Green and Other Stories. Caroline Brandon, Mississippi State University

The Bride of the Innisfallen and Welty’s Battles with Discourse, Carol Ann Johnston, Dickinson College


12:45-2:45 LUNCH BREAK

 2:45-4:45 Reconsidering Welty, Whiteness, and Race EHHP Alumni Center, 86 Wentworth St [Chair, Rebecca Mark, Tulane University]


 Performing Blackness/Revealing Whiteness: Eudora Welty’s Stories of Race. Suzan Harrison, Eckerd College

Crusading Is for the Birds. Elizabeth Crews, Blue Mountain College

White Loyalty and the Politics of Author Societies. Jean C. Griffith, Wichita State University

Losing Battles and the School-to-Pr*son Pipeline. Adrienne Akins Warfield, Mars Hill University 

Turning to Stone: Reading ‘Old Mr. Marblehall’ and ‘Petrified Man’ as Meditations on White Anxiety in the Jim Crow South. Katie Berry Frye, Pepperdine University

 Making Whiteness Visible: Violence, Hate Speech, and Eudora Welty’s Civil Rights Stories. Susan Donaldson, William and Mary College


Sat 2.23 5:00-6:30, Randolph Hall, Closing Roundtable