The next Faulkner Studies in the UK colloquium, celebrating 90 years of Absalom, Absalom!, will take place on May 2nd–3rd, 2026, online via Zoom. Please find the programme below. With keynote speakers Professor Mary Burke (University of Connecticut) and Dr John Michael Corrigan (National Chengchi University), along with contributions from scholars around the world, the conference promises to be one of our best events yet.
We very much hope you’ll be able to join us. If you would like to attend, you can register via this Eventbrite link (which also includes the full schedule) by offering a donation of your choice: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-dark-house-absalom-absalom-at-90-tickets-1986795069536?aff=erellivmlt. If you’re able to, we would also be grateful if you could share the schedule and registration details with colleagues, students, and friends who might be interested in attending.
As with our previous events, the conference is independently run, and while it is affiliated with the British Association for American Studies and Royal Holloway, it does not receive direct financial support from these institutions. Donations help us to cover costs and support future events, and we are grateful for any support you are able to offer.
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PROGRAMME
ALL timings below are according to BRITISH SUMMER TIME (BST), the standard time in the UK during May. Please may all presenters and attendees ensure the times below correspond to their local time zones to avoid unnecessary delays and potential inconvenience.
Day I, Saturday May 2nd, 2026
9:00–10:20 — PANEL 1: “THE DARK HOUSE AND BEYOND: SPACE, FORM, AND ENVIRONMENTAL EXPERIENCE IN ABSALOM, ABSALOM!”
Khawla Bendjemil, “The Decaying Landscape as Narrative of Slow Violence: Environmental Memory in Absalom, Absalom!”
Françoise Buisson, “‘The lost irrevocable might-have-been which haunts all houses’: Inchoateness and Chaotic Completion in Absalom, Absalom!”
Mattias Pirholt, “Entangled Elements in Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom!”
10:20–11:40 — PANEL 2: “CONSUMING THE SOUTH: NARRATIVE PLAY, PERFORMANCE, AND EVERYDAY POETICS IN ABSALOM, ABSALOM!”
Mourad Romdhani, “Rise and Fall: Foodways Poetics in William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! and The Sound and the Fury”
James Stannard, “‘It’s Something my People Haven’t Got’ – Shreve McCannon as 21st Century Reader”
Laura Wilson, “‘Let Me Play a While Now’: How the South Performs for Shreve McCannon in Absalom, Absalom!”
11:40–12:40 — LUNCH
12:40–14:00 — PANEL 3: “FROM LA MANCHA TO YOKNAPATAWPHA AND BEYOND: THE LATIN ROUTES OF ABSALOM, ABSALOM!”
Ruben Paredes, “Some Quixotic Aspects of Absalom, Absalom!”
Elena Dobre, “Spanish Devotion: The Case of Absalom, Absalom! and its Spanish Reception”
Duncan Chesney, “A(nother) Mexican Faulknerian: Fernanda Melchor”
14:00–14:20 — BREAK
14:20–15:20 — KEYNOTE: MARY BURKE
“‘A Dark House’ and a ‘Big House’? Absalom, Absalom! and the Atlantic World”
15:20–15:40 — BREAK
15:40–17:00 — PANEL 4: “OUT OF JOINT: TIME, HISTORY, AND REWRITING IN AND BEYOND ABSALOM, ABSALOM!”
Tessa Roynon, “Ancient Roman Presences in Absalom, Absalom!”
Alex Miller, “Faulkner, Pontecorvo, and Inconsistent Imposition“
Stephanie Suchet, “William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! and Richard Ford’s Frank Bascombe Novels: A Deterritorializing Interplay”
17:00–18:20 — PANEL 5: “SENSING NARRATIVE: SOUND, VISION, AND CONSCIOUSNESS IN FAULKNER’S FICTION”
Gabriele Salciute Civiliene, Marcel Karnapke, and Leslie Deere, “Listening to the Klojimas: Sound, Translation, and Narrative Reconstruction in Faulkner’s South and Lithuanian Cultural Memory”
Randall Wilhelm, “‘I’m Looking for Sutpen’: Pictorial Saturation and the Problem of Hypotyposis in Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom!”
Kaiyue Hou, “A Reader’s Guide to Benjy’s Neurodivergent Consciousness”
Day II, Sunday May 3rd, 2026
10:30–11:50 — PANEL 6: “DESIGNS AND FAILURES: NARRATIVE, POWER, AND THE MAKING OF HISTORY IN ABSALOM, ABSALOM!”
Beatrice Melodia Festa, “Unreliable Bodies, Unreadable Histories: Illness as Narrative Form in Absalom, Absalom!”
Nguyen Viet Hoang, “Petty vs. Grand Ambition: The Sins of the Fathers in As I Lay Dying and Absalom, Absalom!”
Jonathan Hayes, “From Vautrin to ‘Sutpen’s Design’: Reading Absalom, Absalom! Against the Historical Novel”
11:50–13:10 — PANEL 7: “RACE AS STRUCTURE: HISTORY, POWER, AND THE LIMITS OF SOUTHERN NARRATIVE”
Bernard T. Joy, “Between Objective and Subjective Being: The Failed Revolutionary Politics of Thomas Sutpen”
Jein Kim, “Scenes of Kinship in Genealogy Making: A Black Feminist Reading of Absalom, Absalom!”
Carl Rollyson, “Charles Bon and Barack Obama: How a White Novelist Prepared the World for a Black President”
13:10–14:00 — LUNCH
14:00–15:00 — KEYNOTE: JOHN MICHAEL CORRIGAN
“‘In the Empty Air Between Us’: Immanence, Ideology, and Information Flow in Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom!”
15:00–15:20 — BREAK
15:20–16:40 — PANEL 8: “EMBODYING THE GOTHIC: MONSTROSITY, BREATH, AND RACIAL MEMORY IN FAULKNER’S SOUTH”
Ren Denton, “Narrative Authority and Feminized Monstrosity: The Telling and Retelling of Vampiric Memory in Faulkner’s Gothic South”
Lisa Hinrichsen, “Atmosphere, Aspiration, and the “Heritage of Breathing” in Absalom, Absalom!”
Alice Condry-Power, “Absalom, Absalom! as an Appalachian Gothic”
16:40–18:00 — PANEL 9 (CLOSING PANEL): “PASSING, DESIRE, AND VIOLENCE: QUEER LIVES IN ABSALOM, ABSALOM!”
Madison Willis, “In Memoriam: Queering the Memory of the South in Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom!”
Emily Shaw, “Conform or Die: Heteronormative Passing in Absalom, Absalom!”
Phillip “Pip” Gordon, “Thomas Sutpen, Heterosexual: A Failed Reading”
ANNOUNCEMENT AND END OF CONFERENCE
The Zoom links and passwords will be sent to all attendees by Friday May 1st, 2026.
