The Washington Area Modernist Symposium is an annual, one-day event where teachers and advanced students of the more innovative forms of twentieth century literature can meet, present ongoing research, and discuss current trends in the study of modernism. It is open to all approaches and definitions, canonical and revisionary, though the more flexible conceptions that include authors from Gustave Flaubert to Nadine Gordimer are preferred. It is hoped that this will be a site where the study of innovative literature of historically marginalized groups will occur, and papers that discuss experimental women writers, the Harlem Renaissance, Asian modernism, and postcolonial experiments are especially invited. The Symposium is free and open to all.

Date and Place:
1120 Susquehanna Hall
University of Maryland
College Park MD 20742
Saturday, October 19, 2002,  11:30-5:30

I. Early Modernism
Tom Cousineau, Washington College, “From Ritual to Modernism”
Mark McMorris, Georgetown, T.S. Eliot and His Problems 
Jolie Sheffer, Univ of Virginia: “Failures of Ideology and Masculinity in Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent”
James Harding, “Appropriation on the Cutting Edge: New York Dada, Gender, and the Eclipse of Elsa von Freitag-Loringhoven”

II. Joyce, Woolf, and Ideology
Timothy Martin, Rutgers-Camden, “Matthew Arnold in Ulysses”
John Marx, Univ of Richmond, “Modernist Neighborhoods”
Michael Tratner, Bryn Mawr, “Class Conflict Becomes Difference: Modernist Resistence to Revolution”

III. Late Modernism and Beyond
Marcus Singer, “‘Men Out of Time’: History as Palimpsest in Ralph Ellison’s  Invisible Man”
Suzanne Keen, Washington and Lee, “Reflections in a Mirrored Chamber: Felicien Rops, Mary Butts, and Angela Carter’s Marquis”
Padmini Mongia, Franklin and Marshall, "Marketing Indian Fiction: Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things" 
Ellen Friedman, College of New Jersey, “HBO Fathers and Modernism”

IV. New Work in Modernism:
Jessica Berman, UMBC, Modernist Fiction, Cosmopolitanism, and the Politics of Community
Christy Burns, William & Mary, Gestural Politics: Stereotype & Parody in Joyce
Marcel Cornis-Pope, Virginia Commonwealth U, Narrative Innovation and Cultural Rewriting in the Cold War Era and After 
Linda Raphael, George Washington U, Narrative Skepticism: Moral Agency and Representations of Consciousness in Fiction
Michael Tratner, Bryn Mawr, Deficits and Desires: Economics and Sexuality in Twentieth Century Literature
Brian Richardson, UM, ed. Narrative Dynamics: Essays on Time, Plot, Closure, and Frames
Roberta Rubenstein, American University, Home Matters: Longing and Belonging, Nostalgia and Mourning in Women's Fiction

Directions:

From the Beltway: Take the College Park exit (25B); go south on Route One (Baltimore Ave) for about 1.8 miles. The university will be on your right hand side. Drive just past it and turn right on Knox Road. Follow Knox Road up and down a slight hill. Turn right at the stop sign, go 30 feet and turn right again, go 20 feet and turn right once more. The 4 storey brick building in front of you is Susquehanna Hall; park in front or behind it. 

From Baltimore and points north: Take 95 south until you near the intersection with the Washington beltway (495/95). Follow the signs to College Park; hed south on Route 1 (Baltimore Ave). Follow the directions above.

From the Baltimore-Washington Parkway: Take the Greenbelt exit. Go west on Greenbelt Ave (193) for a couple of miles; follow the signs to Route One (Baltimore Ave.) and go south on it for approximately 1 mile. Turn right on Knox Road; follow directions above.

From downtown Washington: Drive north to Military Road/Riggs Road. Follow it westbound until you reach University Avenue. Turn right on University, going south and east on it for about a mile and a half. At the top of the small hill, a few yards before the main road veers left at intersection with Adelphi Road, stay in the right hand lane and keep going straight (east). Enter the university on this street (be in the center lane), follow it (now called Campus Drive) for about a mile until it comes to a T. Turn right. Go downhill for 150 yards, and pull into any of the parking lots to your left. Susquehanna is the medium sized brick building rising above these lots.

By Metro: At the station, go right; through the tunnel and walk west on Calvert some six blocks until you reach and cross Baltimore Ave (Route 1). Go north (right) 3 blocks to a small street at the edge of the campus called Lehigh. Go left and take this to the campus and continue in the same direction over a small incline and back down on the other side. The second large building in front of you is Susquehanna.

Previous Symposium