The E. E. Cummings Society and the Society’s journal, Spring, invite abstracts for 20-minute papers for the 51st annual Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture since 1900, February 22-24, 2024, at the University of Louisville (http://www.thelouisvilleconference.com). Considering Cummings’ ongoing appeal to and influence on an academic and mass readership from various critical perspectives (language, art, genre and culture, cultural divides, eco-criticism, zoopoetics, popular media, adaptation theory, and other approaches), as well as the impact of popular and media appropriations on Cummings’ reputation, the Society’s panel for this year would like to explore Cummings’ affective, interactive modernism in various art forms through his concepts of mimesis and kinesis. 

In light of Cummings’s declaration that his “theory of technique” amounted to being “abnormally fond of that precision which creates movement,” we ask what techniques does he use to achieve a sense of motion, or kinesis, in his writing and painting? How do these techniques contribute to the affect in and effects of his verbal and nonverbal art? How has Cummings influenced other modern/postmodernist poets’ ideas of kinesis? To address these and other questions, this panel welcomes proposals that discuss all elements of mimesis and/or kinesis in Cummings’ work. Papers examining Cummings’ mimesis and/or kinesis from social, ecological, aesthetic, genre-based, translation, and multimedia perspectives are welcome, as are papers that situate Cummings in the context of modernist and post-modernist views of kinesis.

Please send 300-word abstracts (double-spaced and titled) and a brief bio by September 16, 2023 to: gch7u@uvawise.edu

Gillian Huang-Tiller

Professor of English

Dept. of Lang. & Lit.

University of Virginia’s College at Wise

1 College Avenue

Wise, VA 24293

E gch7u@uvawise.edu

P 276-376-4552