The E. E. Cummings Society and the Society’s journal, Spring, invite abstracts for 20-minute papers for the 54th annual Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture since 1900, Feb. 18-20, 2027, at the University of Louisville (https://events.louisville.edu/conferences/list-conferences/louisville-conference-literature-and-culture). Considering Cummings’ ongoing appeal to and influence on an academic and mass readership from various critical perspectives (language, art, genre and culture, cultural divides, eco-criticism, zoopoetics, popular media, adaptation theory, and other approaches), the Society’s panel for this year would like to explore “the artist in yourselves” in the works of Cummings and/or in his aesthetic criticism of creators he considers “true” artists (i: six nonlectures).

Papers for this panel will consider how Cummings rethinks the meaning of “aesthetics” and how his visualization of the “living form”—for example, radical innovations in language, genre, and art forms (painting, poetry, music, dance, drama, etc.), his idiosyncratic placement of punctuation and typography, his own editor’s marks and editorial comments, and numerous drafts and manuscripts—can be seen as his unique conception of material modernism. Papers that explore the broad range of Cummings’ aesthetic thinking seen in everyday items found in both the natural and man-made worlds, including animals, artifacts, and his exhibits in art shows, are also welcome.

Please send 300-word abstracts (double-spaced and titled) and a brief bio by September 12, 2026 to: gch7u@virginia.edu  

Gillian Huang-Tiller, Ph.D.

Professor Emerita of English

Dept. of Language & Literature

University of Virginia’s College at Wise

1 College Avenue

Wise, VA 24293

gch7u@virginia.edu