Call for Papers:

MLA Special Session for 1997 in Toronto.

Class Issues in Southern Gothic Fiction, 1930-1950.

In 1936, speaking to a group of librarians at the University of Virginia, Ellen Glasgow gave the pejorative name "Southern Gothic" to a new and disturbing trend in Southern fiction, one which she associated with Erskine Caldwell and the yet-to-be-canonical William Faulkner. The term stuck, and has been rather widely and indiscriminately used since then. Assuming that there is some generic basis for the term, I invite papers dealing with questions of class in Southern Gothic fictions of the 1930's and 1940's.

Deadline: 15 March 1997

Please send one-page abstracts by mail or email to:

Louis H Palmer, III
Department of American Thought and Language
252 Ernst Bessey Hall
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI 48824-1033

palmerlo@pilot.msu.edu

Phone: (517) 355-3508
FAX: (517) 353-5250