The E. E. Cummings Society invites proposals for two panels at the American Literature Association conference, to be held at the Palmer House Hilton, Chicago on May 26-29, 2022.

Panel 1: Cummings and Transcendence

In 1960, Norman Friedman declared that Cummings’ “philosophy of life” was “transcendental, romantic, prelapsarian, organicist, and individualistic. The same is publicly available in the writings of many others, such as Emerson, Whitman, Thoreau, and Emily Dickinson” (Art 66). We seek papers examining, critiquing, clarifying, or complicating these assertions through a close reading of any Cummings work(s).