The Seventh Faulkner Studies in the UK Colloquium
Buzzards, Moths, and Peacocks: The Southern Menagerie of Faulkner, Williams, and O’Connor
May 26th, 27th, and 28th, 2023
Online via Zoom
With keynote addresses by:
Professor Michael Zeitlin
(author of Faulkner, Aviation, and Modern War [Bloomsbury, 2022])
Professor Henry I. Schvey
(author of Blue Song: St. Louis in the Life and Work of Tennessee Williams [University of Missouri Press, 2021])
and
Professor Monica Miller
(author of Being Ugly: Southern Women Writers and Social Rebellion [LSU Press, 2017])
The Seventh Faulkner Studies in the UK colloquium celebrates the lives and works of three titans of twentieth-century letters: William Faulkner, Tennessee Williams, and Flannery O’Connor. Not only are these writers kindred spirits by virtue of their lifelong connection to – and, arguably, even obsession with – the South, but their fictional visions of American life present readers with a veritable menagerie of outcasts, fugitives, and misfits tasked with enduring “solitary confinement within [their] own skins.” Like the buzzards, moths, and peacocks that inhabit their vivid and oftentimes lurid landscapes, their unforgettable cast of characters – including Addie Bundren, Blanche DuBois, Hazel Motes, and countless more – shape and are shaped by their distinctly Southern habitats.
This conference invites 20-minute papers on any topic related to William Faulkner, and/or Tennessee Williams, and/or Flannery O’Connor, including but not limited to:
– Biographical readings and contexts
– Experiments with form: short stories, novels, plays, poems, essays, literary criticism, and public addresses
– Animalia: buzzards, moths, peacocks, cows, horses, mules, cats, birds, turkeys, gorillas, and (of course) fish
– Ecology and the pastoral
– Representations of disability and neurodiversity
– The significance of home, family, and “nation”
– Definitions and experiences of “Southernness”
– Religion, spirituality, and Catholicism
– Gender and sexuality
– Violence, murder, criminality, incarceration, and revenge
– Outcasts, misfits, and “the fugitive kind”
– Relationships with Hollywood and pop culture icons (Humphrey Bogart, Marilyn Monroe, Marlon Brando, Elizabeth Taylor, Truman Capote, and countless more)
– New readings of film adaptations including The Story of Temple Drake (1933), A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), and Wise Blood (1979)
– The politics of reputation and “late style”
– Literary theory, sociology, and/or sexology (Sigmund Freud, Havelock Ellis, Alfred Kinsey, Michel Foucault, Hélène Cixous, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Judith Butler, bell hooks, and so on)
The Faulkner Studies in the UK Research Network is dedicated to soliciting papers from scholars who reflect the diversity of Faulkner Studies in terms of gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, institutional affiliation, and locality. We aim to include a mix of participants from across the career spectrum (from under- and post-graduate students to full professors). All are welcome to apply.
Please submit a c. 250-word proposal to the event organiser, Dr Ahmed Honeini, at ahmed.honeini.2015@live.rhul.ac.uk by April 3rd, 2023. Successful applicants will be informed of their acceptance by April 6th, 2023. Follow us on Twitter: @Faulkner_UK.
