"Humanizing Jeffers," Robinson Jeffers Association Conference, Feb 20-22, 2015, Carmel, CA
full name / name of organization:
Robinson Jeffers Association
contact email:
robinsonjeffersassociation@gmail.com
"Humanizing Jeffers: Father, Son, Neighbor, Friend, Lover"

At one point in his career, poet Robinson Jeffers referred to his outlook on the world as "inhumanism," a term that seemed to capture, for his critics and detractors, so many of the things that they disliked about him: his aloof, superior-seeming stance, intentionally distanced from his time and culture; his didactic, "cold" tone that seemed to lecture rather than empathize; his perverse-seeming
fascination with rocks and trees when men, women, and children were suffering from economic crisis and catastrophic war. Yet, as the recent publication of the three-volume set of _The Collected Letters of Robinson Jeffers with Selected Letters of Una Jeffers_ has shown, that caricature of Jeffers is misleading. In the letters, he emerges as a passionate, considerate, loving man, one responsive to major events in the world as well as those in his own backyard, a fallible and deeply human man with both a sense of humility and a sense of humor. Nonetheless, the image of Jeffers as a bitter, misanthropic Cassandra has persisted in popular perception and has deeply colored how we understand his work. With the publication of the letters, the time has come to take another look at the Jeffers whom we think we know and reconsider the man and his work from a new angle.

The 21st Annual RJA Conference seeks papers that help rehumanize Jeffers and his work. Papers might consider the ways in which the human emerges in his work: as beings with emotions and desires, spiritual beliefs and doubts, ambitions and disappointments. Papers might consider Jeffers himself from a biographical perspective: as a father whose son went to war, as a lover whose passions drove him, as an author struggling to make his voice heard. Papers might also reconsider the meaning of Jeffers' concept of inhumanism itself to expand our understanding of his meaning and others' interpretations of it. Papers that address topics outside of this area will also be accepted, as new work about Jeffers is always welcome at the annual
RJA Conference. Paper proposals should be 250-500 words and e-mailed by 15 December 2014 to incoming RJA Executive Director, Dale Stieber, at robinsonjeffersassociation@gmail.com. Presentations should not exceed twenty minutes.

cfp categories:
american
ecocriticism_and_environmental_studies
modernist studies
poetry