CFP: Stephen Crane Panels at ALA 2014 (Deadline: 1.10.2014)

Posted on November 29, 2013 by Donna Campbell

Call for Papers: Stephen Crane Society
ALA 2014

The Stephen Crane Society will sponsor two sessions at the American Literature Association Conference at the Hyatt Regency Washington on Capitol Hill, 22-25 May 2014. All topics are welcome. Here, for example, are a few suggestions:

  • · Crane’s depiction of war
  • · Crane and the arts (e. g., painting, photography, music)
  • · Crane’s depiction of the city
  • · Crane’s poetry
  • · Crane’s journalism
  • · the Sullivan County tales and sketches
  • · the Western stories
  • · the Whilomville stories
  • · one of Crane’s lesser-known novels (The Third Violet, Active Service, or The O’Ruddy)
  • · Crane’s depiction of women
  • · Crane’s relationship with other writers, e. g., Garland, Howells, Conrad, or Frederic

Presentations will be limited to 20 minutes.

You may also propose a roundtable discussion on, say, teaching Crane’s short stories.

Please email abstracts or papers of no more than ten double-spaced pages by January 10, 2014, to the program chair:

Paul Sorrentino

psorrent@vt.edu

For further information, please consult the ALA website at http://www.americanliterature.org or contact the conference director, Professor Alfred Bendixen of Texas A & M University at abendixen@tamu.edu with specific questions.

 

Posted in Call for Papers | Leave a comment

Stephen Crane in the News: “When a Crowd Gathers” at LOA

Posted on November 29, 2013 by Donna Campbell

From http://storyoftheweek.loa.org/2010/05/when-man-falls-crowd-gathers.html

Stephen Crane’s sketches and articles for New York newspapers often describe people seen or things experienced on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. The following narrative, originally published in The New York Press in 1894, is characteristic in its description of life on the streets; based on a real incident, it was published under the multi-level headline:

 

WHEN MAN FALLS, A CROWD GATHERS
A Graphic Study of New York Heartlessness
GAZING WITH PITILESS EYES
“What’s the Matter?” That Too Familiar Query

Describing the “heartlessness” of a voyeuristic crowd pushing each other to get a view of a man having a seizure, the article also depicts a few strangers trying to help and the terror of the boy who had been accompanying the man. Michael Robertson notes in Stephen Crane, Journalism, and the Making of Modern American Literature that, while “Crane’s general indifference to race is remarkable,” this sketch is one of his few New York pieces that specifically mentions ethnicity: “the two central characters’ Italian speech is used to emphasize the threatening nature of the crowd.” [continue reading at above link] 

From Stephen Crane: Prose and Poetry

Posted in Stephen Crane in the News | Tagged | Leave a comment