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Eudora Welty Society, Call for Papers
American Literature Association Conference
May 26-29, 2011, Boston, MA

Violence in the Fiction of Eudora Welty

Critics have tended to see Welty as lyrical or humorous or even serious, but not as someone who writes about violence. Whether we define violence as domestic, related to war or racial
conflict, or simply as the violence of a soul battling the forces of the environment, death, and day-to-day life, violence sits on the edge or in the coded interior of almost every Welty novel and story. While we have come to understand that Welty was not a bystander to life or politics, we have rarely addressed this central issue of her work. We welcome papers focused on any aspect or manifestation of violence – historical, social or psychological – in Welty's fiction, and/or papers exploring Eudora Welty's relationship to the violence that rocked the foundations of Jackson, Mississippi and raged throughout the world during her lifetime. Please send inquiries and statements of intent, as soon as possible, and titled paper proposals of 500 words by December 15, 2010, to David McWhirter, Texas A&M University, d-mcwhirter@tamu.edu.