Award-winning author Tobias Wolff, writer-in-residence and Jesse Truesdell Peck professor of English at Syracuse University, was a featured lecturer at the 1997 Twentieth Century Literature Conference |
Each year in February, more than 600 writers and scholars come together on U of L’s Belknap campus to discuss such disparate topics as the literature of the Holocaust, magical realism, Bloomsbury, classic Hollywood Cinema, and cyberpunk. The gathering has a friendly, festive nature, and a unique creative niche that has attracted such diverse keynote speakers as Howard Nemarov, the nation's former poet laureate; Kentucky’s own Bobbie Ann Mason; and acclaimed This Boy’s Life author Tobias Wolff. Obviously, this isn’t a typical academic conference. It’s U of L’s annual Twentieth Century Literature Conference, which director Hariette Seiler, a U of L lecturer in French, describes as "a celebration of the literature of this century that promotes scholarly study and highlights creative work in fiction." It’s also a dynamic three-day encounter with literary experts, which attracts U of L faculty, graduate students, and scholars from academic institutions in Australia, Canada, Finland, Mexico and Taiwan, as well as from all 50 states. |
While most academic conferences tend toward the scholarly, U of L’s combines the traditional presentation of papers with creative writing, according to Sena Jeter Naslund, a U of L Distinguished Teaching Professor of creative writing and a long-time conference committee member.
"About 23 years ago, I suggested to the conference committee that we permit fiction writers and poets to participate in the conference on the same footing as scholars," Naslund says. "Without knowing the identities of the writers, we would read submitted poetry and fiction and choose the best work. Since that idea’s acceptance, writers from all over the U.S. have competed to read here. About 28 contemporary writers now read their own work at each conference, and often they express pleasure at our innovation."
Stating that she knows of no other similarly structured national meeting, Seiler says the conference committee stresses quality, not rank, in its choice of presenters. The policy of evaluating blind submissions allows papers authored by both graduate students and full professors equal opportunity for acceptance.
U of L English Professor and former department Chair Robert H. Miller, involved with the conference since its inception, says, "It’s the kind of conference students feel confident attending because it addresses a body of modern and contemporary work with which they’re likely to be familiar. Also, in recent years, the number of sessions related to gender studies, African-American literature, Native American literature, and other areas of the field that were until recently marginalized or ignored have increased, resulting in greater participation."
Luke Wallin, a fiction writer and professor of English at the University of Massachusetts
at North Dartmouth, attended his first Twentieth-Century Literature Conference in 1983, and has since returned five or six times as a presenter. "Of all the conferences I attend, this is my favorite," he says. "There’s a nice mix of literature and creative writing professors, and I’ve come across plenty of American Studies scholars and historians, too. I find it’s easy to meet and talk with people in a variety of disciplines, a rare experience in the narrowly channeled academic world."
Another plus for U of L’s conference is its location. Unlike most conferences, which take place in hotel meeting rooms, the Twentieth Century Literature Conference holds it events on Belknap Campus in classrooms and auditoriums. This allows speakers and attendees significant contact with university faculty, students, and staff.
In fact, a familiar sight to conference regulars is the luncheon buffet hosted by U of L’s English Graduate Organization. As many as 130 students also serve by chairing conference sessions and opening their homes to visiting students in need of housing.
As active as U of L’s Department of English now is in planning and executing the three-day event, the Department of Classical and Modern Languages actually founded the conference in 1984. Not long afterward, the Department of English became a co-sponsor.
A team of U of L professors guides the conference through a planning committee. They begin planning the next conference "as soon as the last one is over," meeting throughout the year.
Under Seiler’s leadership, the conference has doubled in size. It is entirely self-supporting, earning operating income from the $60 per person fee (with the exception of graduate students, who receive a discount; U of L and Metroversity faculty attend free).
In addition to the conference’s reasonable cost, attendance was bolstered by a shift in emphasis a few years ago. "Our planning committee decided to abandon annual themes in favor of open-topic paper submissions. Now all participants can locate sessions of interest, and we no longer contend with presentations artificially skewed to adapt to limited—and sometimes limiting—subjects," says Seiler.
Miller also suggests that since English is a language familiar to people of so many nationalities, writing in English no longer translates as literature produced by the British and descendants of British immigrants to North America. "This conference showcases contemporary writing and scholarship in English from everywhere," he says, "as well as literature in other languages."
This showcase of contemporary literature has added benefits for U of L faculty and students. "Cutting-edge authors and scholars speaking right here on campus keep all our professors and students very aware of trends and developments in twentieth century research," says Seiler. "The conference also allows them to network with scholars who often reciprocate by inviting U of L professors and students to speak at their institutions."
Seiler contends that the conference primarily serves to complement scholars’ knowledge by permitting them to compliment—instead of to compete with—each others’ research and writing. "I return to the word ‘celebration’ to describe what the Twentieth-Century Literature Conference is truly about," says Seiler. "Unlike meetings of the MLA (Modern Language Association) or similar conferences where people gather primarily to job hunt, U of L’s relaxed conference atmosphere encourages participants to meet and talk with colleagues and role models they may have previously encountered only in texts or through classroom discussions."
Twentieth Century Treasures
| Across the quad
from the Bingham Humanities Building where conference attendees meet, the Rare Books Room
in Ekstrom Library holds the manuscripts, books, and letters of many twentieth century
literary giants. Rare Books Coordinator Delincla Buie observes, "If you compare UofL's twentieth century rare book and manuscript holdings to similar collections held by benchmark institutions, ours are excellent." Twentieth century volumes comprise more than half of U of Us 75,000 rare books. The collection includes former U of L English Professor Richard M. Kain's volumes from the Irish Literary Renaissance; the Barry Bingham, Sr. Collection of Modern Literature (which includes novels by James Conrad and first editions by members of London's mid-century Bloomsbury Group); work by Graham Greene, Laurence Durrell, Randall Jarrell, and J.D. Salinger; and all of William Faulkner's first editions. "I'm always on the lookout for interesting manuscripts I think graduate stunts will find useful," says Buie. "For instance, I recently acquired for U of L SyIvia Plath's edition of Virginia Wolf's Orlando and we house some interesting correspondence between .B. Yeats and Lady Gregory." The Rare Books Room's holdings aren't limited to literature's traditional or even conventional canons. Pulp magazines (and their predecessors, dime novels), little magazines, and Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan novels hold their places in the collection alongside a rich collection of H.L. Mencken's writings. The strength of the collection lies in the generosity of many devoted readers. "Most of our collection has been developed through gifts and an increasing endowment," says Buie. That endowment is helping the library build its holdings in new directions, such as additions to the African-American literature collection that Buie and UofL English Professor Karen Chandler are working together to enlarge. |
L. Elisabeth Beattie is an associate professor of English
and journalism at Elizabethtown Community College and is the editor of Conversations
with Kentucky Writers
