Program
Wednesday, April 9
11:00 am & 2:30 pm: Introduction to the Welty Special Collection at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, William Winter Building, Pre-registration Required.
On April 9, the Mississippi Department of Archives and History will offer an introduction to archival research in the Eudora Welty Collection at the William F. Winter Archives and History Building for pre-registered attendees. Please arrive 15 minutes ahead of your assigned session. Parking is available on both North Street and Amite Street, as well as in the two Mississippi museums’ visitor’s parking garage, accessible from Jefferson Street. There are stairs from the garage to the entrance of the Winter Building. To register for a free researcher’s card before or after the event, please bring a government issued ID.
2:00 pm to 5:00 pm (or until finished): Scholars’ Tribute to Eudora Welty’s “The Wanderers” Rehearsal, Academic Complex, Room 215
Thursday, April 10
*Unless otherwise noted, all events take place in the James and Madeleine McMullan Lecture Hall, Room 122 of the Richard and Selby McRae Christian Center (hereafter, Christian Center).
8:30 am to 10:00 am: Shuttle Bus from Homewood Suites Fondren to Millsaps
8:45 am (ongoing): Registration
9:00 am to 10:00 am: Scholars’ Tribute to Eudora Welty’s “The Wanderers” Rehearsal, Academic Complex, Room 215
10:15 am: Opening Remarks
Rebecca L. Harrison, University of West Georgia, and President, Eudora Welty Society
10:30am to 11:45am: RETHINKING WELTY AND/IN MODERNISM
Chair, David McWhirter
1. “Welty and Vernacular Modernisms,”
David McWhirter, Texas A&M University
2. “The Trouble with Welty’s Wilderness: Modernist and Postmodernist Histories in ‘A Still Moment,’”
Suzan Harrison, Eckerd College
3. “Welty, Bowen, and Queer Modernism,”
Carol Ann Johnston, Dickinson College
4. “A Light Breath: Violence, War, and Gender in The Golden Apples,”
Rebecca Mark, Rutgers University
12:00 pm to 1:00 pm: Boxed Lunch sponsored by the University of Mississippi English Department, Christian Center, Room 120
1:00 pm to 2:00 pm: EMPATHY AND EPIPHANY
Chair, Julia Eichelberger
1. “Parting the Curtain: Modernism, Empathy, and Epiphany in Eudora Welty’s The Golden Apples,”
Grace Perry McCright, Baylor University
2. “‘[B]etween the surfaces of your hearts’: Eudora Welty’s Writerly Empathy in ‘The Key,’”
Katie Berry Frye, Pepperdine University
3. “Welty’s Chameleon Poetics in ‘Moon Lake’ and Her Letters,”
Julia Eichelberger, College of Charleston
2:00 pm to 2:15 pm Coffee Break
2:15 pm to 3:15 pm: GENDER, JOURNEY, AND ADOLESCENCE
Chair, Harriet Pollack
1. “Asexual Girlhood: Queering Coming of Age in Welty’s Southern Girl Stories,”
Allison Nick, Millsaps College
2. “‘All that would beckon . . . all that was beautiful’: Accessing Language and Selfhood through Commodified Acts of Beauty in Eudora Welty’s Short Fiction and Autobiographical Writings,”
Katherine Howell Tutor, University of Mississippi
3. “Gaze, ‘Switch,’ See: Phenomenology of Boyhood and Race in Eudora Welty’s ‘Moon Lake,’”
Tanner Crunelle, Cornell University
3:15 pm to 4:00 pm: Shuttle Bus to Eudora Welty House and Garden, departing from Christian Center
4:30 pm to 5:45 pm: BETTYE JOLLY LECTURE AND RECEPTION: Jesmyn Ward, "Narratives of Witness, Narratives of Self"
Location: Eudora Welty House and Garden.
Jesmyn Ward, two-time National Book Award-winner, will reflect on her experiences growing up in DeLisle, the Gulf Coast Mississippi town, and how they shape both her latest novel Let Us Descend and her profound body of work. This marquee event of our conference will be held at the Eudora Welty House in partnership with the Eudora Welty Foundation and the Millsaps College Visiting Writers Series. Book-signing and reception to follow.
5:45 pm to 6:45 pm: Shuttle bus to Millsaps and Homewood Suites Fondren, departing from the Eudora Welty House and Garden
6:45 pm: Dinner on your own. Jackson restaurants
Friday, April 11
*Unless otherwise noted, all events take place in the James and Madeleine McMullan Lecture Hall, Room 122 of the Richard and Selby McRae Christian Center (hereafter, Christian Center).
8:30 am to 10:00 am: Shuttle Bus from Homewood Suites Fondren to Millsaps
8:45 am (ongoing): Registration
9:00 am to 10:00 am: Scholars’ Tribute to Eudora Welty’s “The Wanderers” Rehearsal, Academic Complex, Room 215
10:15 am: Announcements and Coffee, Christian Center, Room 120
10:30am to 11:45am: DIGITAL WELTY AND NEW MEDIA
Chair, Michael Pickard
1. “Researching in the 21st Century: An Introduction to the Eudora Welty Digital Archives,”
Elisabeth Cambonga & Laura Heller, MDAH
2. “Enhancing the Eudora Welty Digital Archives: Toward a Comprehensive Edition of Welty’s Correspondence,”
Michael Pickard, Millsaps College
3. “EudoraTok: Welty’s Scissors Technique and the Cutting Up of Culture,”
Laura Sloan Patterson, Seton Hill University
4. “A Piece of News: Finding Eudora Welty in the Newspaper,”
Melissa Fox, Independent Scholar
12:00 am to 1:15 pm: HOMES, TWINS, & ELDERS
Chair, Sarah Gilbreath Ford
1. “A House Possessed in Eudora Welty’s The Golden Apples,”
Sarah Gilbreath Ford, Baylor University
2. “Why Twins?”
Pearl A. McHaney, Georgia State University
3. “The Aged Body in Welty’s Fiction and Photography,”
Donnie McMahand & Kevin Murphy, Towson University
4. “Mothers and Daughters in Welty's Correspondence and Fiction,”
Harriet Pollack, College of Charleston
1:15 pm to 2:15 pm: Boxed Lunch sponsored by the Jackson State University English Department and the Margaret Walker Alexander Center, Christian Center, Room 120
2:15 pm to 3:30 pm: WELTY AND OTHERS
Chair, Adrienne Akins Warfield
1. “‘A womb where thousands of rivers’: Welty's ‘The Wide Net’ as an Ecofeminist Retelling of Blake's ‘The Book of Urizen,’”
Charlotte Aexel, Georgia College & State University
2. “Austen and Welty ‘After All,’”
Mary Ann O'Farrell, Texas A&M University
3. “Down the Mine in the 21st Century with V.S. Pritchett and Eudora Welty,”
Jo Ellyn Clarey, Independent Scholar
4. “‘If you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?’: Class and Comedic Voice in Welty, Faulkner, and Kingsolver,”
Adrienne Akins Warfield, Mars Hill University
3:30 pm to 4:00 pm: Coffee Break, Christian Center, Room 120
4:00 pm to 5:00 pm: EUDORA SCREENING
Location: Gertrude C. Ford Academic Complex, Room 137
A film by Anthony and Amy Thaxton, EUDORA is a revealing portrait of adventure, daring, humor, and love. Welty is explored through intimate film clips and interviews with family and friends, set against the backdrop of Jackson, Mississippi. Our film showing will be followed by a Q & A with filmmaker Amy Thaxton, and three of the film’s interviewees, Mary Alice Welty White, Suzanne Marrs, and Ralph Eubanks.
5:00 pm to 6:00 pm: EUDORA FILM PANEL
Moderator, Michael Pickard, Millsaps College
1. Amy Thaxton, Mississippi College
2. Mary Alice Welty White, Eudora Welty Foundation
3. W. Ralph Eubanks, University of Mississippi
4. Suzanne Marrs, Millsaps College
6:00 pm to 7:00 pm: Reception sponsored by the Eudora Welty Review, First Floor Lobby, Academic Complex
6:00 pm to 8:00 pm: Shuttle bus from Millsaps to Homewood Suites Fondren
7:00 pm: Dinner on your own. Jackson restaurants
Saturday, April 12
*Unless otherwise noted, all events take place in the James and Madeleine McMullan Lecture Hall, Room 122 of the Richard and Selby McRae Christian Center (hereafter, Christian Center).
8:45 am to 9:30 am: Shuttle Bus from Homewood Suites Fondren to Millsaps and the Medgar and Myrlie Evers Home
8:45 am (ongoing): Registration
9:00 am to 11:00 am: Scholars’ Tribute to Eudora Welty’s “The Wanderers” Rehearsal, Academic Complex, Room 215
9:30 am: Guided Tour of the Medgar and Myrlie Evers House National Monument (for those not in the performance)
The assassination of Medgar Evers, 37-year old NAACP field secretary and civil rights activist, compelled Eudora Welty to write—beginning on the day he was murdered—one of her most haunting and political stories. Evers's murder in the carport of his family's home on June 12, 1963 was the first killing of a nationally significant leader of the American Civil Rights Movement. Visitors attending our tour of the home—the location where Evers was shot as he returned from a meeting organizing voter registration—may better understand the sacrifices made by Medgar and Myrlie Evers, the challenges and impacts of their work, the realities of living under constant threat of violence during the Jim Crow era, as well as the everyday life of the Evers family.
10:45 am to 11:15 am: Shuttle Bus from Evers Home to Homewood Suites Fondren and Millsaps
11:30 am: Announcements and Coffee, Christian Center, Room 120
11:45 am to 1:00 pm: PHOTOGRAPHY, MATERIALITY, MYSTERY, AND KINESTHESIA
Chair, Stephen Fuller
1. “‘You ever see a bird smile?’: Black Women’s Revisionist Aesthetic Performance in Welty’s Photography and Writing,”
Ebony Lumumba, Jackson State University
2. “Dim and Untouchable Things: Sir Arthur Eddington’s The Nature of the Physical World in Drafts of Eudora Welty’s ‘The Burning,’”
Gabrielle Bowden, University of Mississippi
3. “A Surprise Double Feature: The Strange Case of Eudora Welty and Cornell Woolrich,”
Jacob Agner, University of Mississippi
4. “Eudora Welty’s Kinesthetic Women,”
Stephen Fuller, Middle Georgia State University
1:00 pm to 2:00 pm: Boxed Lunch sponsored by the University of Mississippi Center for the Study of Southern Culture, Christian Center, Room 120
2:15 pm to 3:30 pm: NATURE, LAND, AND NATIONAL POLITICS
Chair: Mae Miller Claxton
1. “‘Wild Girls’: Eudora Welty’s One Writer’s Beginnings and Wilma Dykeman’s Family of Earth,”
Mae Miller Claxton, Western Carolina University
2. “Joel Mayes and Jenny Lockhart as Functional Parallels: Tracing the Perpetuation of the Colonial Narrative in ‘First Love’ and ‘At the Landing,’” Izzy Herring, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
3. “Homeland Security: Anti-German Panic in Eudora Welty’s ‘June Recital,’” Annette Trefzer, University of Mississippi
4. “Mapping the Geographies of The Optimist’s Daughter,” Gary Richards, University of Mary Washington
3:30 pm to 3:45 pm: Coffee Break
3:45 pm to 5:00 pm: PROSPECTS FOR FUTURE STUDIES: A ROUNDTABLE
Moderator: Pearl A. McHaney
1. Elisabeth Cambonga, Mississippi Department of Archives and History
2. Sara Nordin, Eudora Welty House and Garden
3. Jeanne Luckett, Eudora Welty Foundation
4. Suzanne Marrs, Biographical Studies
5. Sarah Gilbreath Ford, Eudora Welty Review
6. Rebecca L. Harrison, Eudora Welty Society
7. Harriet Pollack, Critical Perspectives on Eudora Welty, a UPM Book Series
5:15 pm to 5:45 pm: Reception sponsored by Millsaps College
Phoenix Award Presentation and Closing Remarks Rebecca L. Harrison, University of West Georgia, and President, Eudora Welty Society
Written by Brenda Currin and Kari Margolis.
Inspired and based on Eudora Welty’s short story “The Wanderers,” using Eudora Welty's words selectively. By the permission of Russell & Volkening as agents for the author’s estate.
Actress, adaptor, and Weltian Brenda Currin has teamed up with the extraordinary theater artist, Kari Margolis, to compose a tribute to Welty’s short story “The Wanderers” to be enacted by a cast of eighteen well-known Welty Scholars on the Millsaps College stage. Together, we'll reenter Morgana to reencounter Katie and Virgie Rainey; the Stark women; Cassie Morrison and Mr. Bitts; King, Ran, and Snowdie MacLain; and Juba all.
7:00 pm: Millsaps Reception Continued
7:15 pm to 8:30 pm: Shuttle bus from Millsaps to Homewood Suites Fondren
8:00 pm: Dinner on your own. Jackson restaurants
Sunday, April 13
8:30 am to 8:45 am: Shuttle Bus from Homewood Suites Fondren to Welty House
8:45 am to 11:00 am: Welty House Birthday Tour for Welty Scholars led by Mary Alice Welty White, Suzanne Marrs, and Susan Haltom.
Location: Eudora Welty House and Garden, 1119 Pinehurst Street
We will celebrate Eudora Welty's 116th birthday with cake and VIP tours of the Eudora Welty House and Garden. If you haven't been there before, you'll learn that Eudora and her mother Chestina planned and tended to the impressive garden located at the side and back of their home over decades. And that Eudora often wrote in her bedroom or on the porch, which frequently hosted visiting writers and local friends and now us too. If you have visited before, we think you will see it freshly in these dedicated tours for Welty scholars. We'll arrive at the Visitor's Center at 8:45 am to divide into groups rotating through different parts of the property and ask that you please preregister so that we can estimate and plan attendance.
11:00 am to 1:00 pm: Shuttle Bus from Welty House to Homewood Suites Fondren and Millsaps
1:00 pm: Dance Adaptation of "Why I Live at the P.O."
Performed by Albena Kervanbashieva and Beck Farris
Location: Gertrude C. Ford Academic Complex, Recital Hall
This charming adaptation of Welty's comic story will arrive from New York City to help us celebrate the writer's 116th birthday. The beloved short story will come to life in a whimsical, multidisciplinary dance/physical theater adaptation, directed and choreographed by Haila Strauss, with original music by Donna Cribari, and performed by dancers/physical actors Albena Kervanbashieva and Beck Farris. This thirty-minute delight, followed by a talkback with the cast, will take you to China Grove, Mississippi, 1941, straight into the entangled lives of the Rondo family—Sister, Stella Rondo, Mama, Pappa Daddy, Uncle Rondo and even the little Shirley T!
2:00 pm to 3:00 pm: Shuttle Bus from Millsaps to Homewood Suites Fondren
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[A Note on Technology: The main lecture hall, room 122 of the Richard and Selby McRae Christian Center, has a projector and computer workstation. Presenters can plug their own laptops into the projector, so long as they have an HDMI port (or a connector/dongle), or they can plug a flash drive into the computer workstation.]