CFP: Delmore Schwartz and Others (12/1/06; ALA, 5/24/07-5/27/07)

Proposed Panel for American Literature Association (ALA) Conference

May 24-27, 2007, Boston

=20

Delmore Schwartz and Others

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Delmore Schwartz is now recognized as much for the spectacle of his =
meteoric
life and career than for his poetry or prose, some of which certainly
belongs in any collection of the twentieth century=92s best literature. =
But he
also ran in important circles. Appearing in the first issue of the =
re-tooled
(anti-Stalinist) _Partisan Review_ in 1937, an editor at _The New =
Republic_,
and a professor at Harvard and Syracuse (not to mention being =
distinguished
in 1944 as a leading light of the =93younger generation of American =
Jews=94 by
the _Contemporary Jewish Record_), Schwartz associated and became =
friendly
with (before, as he irreversibly declined into social and artistic
dysfunction, irritating beyond endurance) many of the most influential =
and
consequential intellectuals of twentieth century American culture. His
cohort reads, as the clich=E9 goes, like a who=92s who of people who had =
and
would have, to say the least, a determining effect on post-war U.S. =
culture:
Philip Rahv, Saul Bellow, Alfred Kazin, Paul Goodman, James Agee, Dwight
MacDonald, James Laughlin, William Philips, Sidney Hook, Irving Howe, =
Mary
McCarthy, Clement Greenberg, Meyer Schapiro, Norman Podhoretz, R. P.
Blackmur, John Berryman, John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, Lionel Trilling,
Harold Rosenberg, F. O. Matthiessen, and William Barrett, to name a few.
Though many of these figures were (and even fewer still are) Jewish, not =
all
of them were, and their individual and collective effects certainly were
felt beyond a small if visible circle of second generation immigrants.

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This panel seeks to explore the career and work of Delmore Schwartz =
through
an examination of his circle. Papers are sought on any aspect of =
Schwartz=92s
life and work as refracted through the intellectuals, artists, and other
figures he knew and with whom he worked. I=92m interested in a wide =
array of
proposals, including (but not limited to) literary, historical, (and =
indeed
literary historical,) political, philosophical, aesthetic or art =
historical,
sociological, ethnic and/or Jewish studies, and biographical approaches.
Questions this panel might address include the following: What was
Schwartz=92s relationship to important aesthetic, literary, =
philosophical, or
historical theories? How (if at all) are his intellectual and social
affiliations felt in his work? Why did Schwartz=92s work often (in =
general)
lack the explicit political content of that of many of his fellows? How =
is
an analytical abstraction like =93The Twentieth Century=94 manifested in
Schwartz=92s work? In what ways is Schwartz felt in the work of others?

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Please submit paper proposals by December 1, 2006 to Ben Schreier at
bjs44_at_psu.edu (or, if necessary, Jewish Studies Department, 105 Weaver
Building, Penn State University, University Park, PA 16902). Feel free =
to
write with any questions.

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Received on Thu Oct 12 2006 - 11:19:53 EDT