Calls for Papers

Nathaniel Hawthorne Society Call-for-Papers

The American Literature Association’s Annual Conference will meet at the Manchester Grand Hyatt in San Diego, CA on May 21-24, 2020. The Nathaniel Hawthorne Society is issuing two CFPs for the conference:

1) Hawthorne and Neo-Aesthetics

The editors of Aesthetics in a Multicultural Age wonder what aesthetics would look like in a world that no longer “assumes that there are universal standards of beauty” (3). This panel, therefore, seeks papers that reconsider Hawthorne’s work from a post- or neo-aesthetic perspective, including fresh ways to interrogate how judgment, heuristics, and standards of beauty function within his body of work. Short stories, longer works (such as The Blithedale Romance or The Marble Faun), and non-fiction (including the European notebooks) are all welcome.

2) Hawthorne and Fatherhood

We invite proposals for papers exploring aspects of “Hawthorne and Fatherhood.” This may include, but is not limited to: Hawthorne as father; Julian’s and Rose’s memories of their father; missing fathers (as in Hawthorne’s own); father stand-ins, such as grandfather in Grandfather’s Chair; Dimmesdale as deadbeat father or Chillingworth as want-to-be father, leaving his money to Pearl; Coverdale and Hollingsworth avoiding fatherhood, though the latter wants to be some great paternal figure; barren men and husbands, as in House of Seven Gables; or other fathers in Hawthorne’s shorter fiction.

Please submit abstracts of approximately 250 words to Nancy Sweet nsweet@csus.edu by January 11, 2020.