American Literature Association

34th Annual Conference

May 25-28, 2023

The Westin Copley Place
10 Huntington Avenue
Boston, MA 02116

Edith Wharton and Weather: Culture, Climate, and Change

There’s a lot of weather in Edith Wharton’s writing: storms, snow, heat, and wind. Among other questions, proposals might consider the following:

• How do climactic phenomena trigger, mirror, provoke human behaviors and reactions?
• How do Wharton’s sensibilities as a traveler, gardener, and interior designer inform her approaches to weather and vice versa?  
• How does weather figure into Wharton’s status as realist, sentimentalist, satirist, or modernist?

Please submit a 250-300 word abstract and a brief CV by January 5, 2022. Please include any requests for AV needs in your proposal. Scholars whose proposals are accepted must be members in good standing of the Edith Wharton Society by the time of the conference.

Please send to mjjessee@uab.edu and mgoldsmith@ursinus.edu.