The 32nd Annual Meeting of the T. S. Eliot Society
Co-sponsored by the University of Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense (Paris X)
Paris, France, July 18–22, 2011
Call for Papers
The Society's annual meeting will be held in Paris to commemorate the centenary of Eliot's vital postgraduate year in that city. Clearly organized proposals of about 300 words, on any topic reasonably related to Eliot, along with biographical sketches, should be forwarded by February 13, 2011, to the President, David Chinitz, preferably by email to dchinit@luc.edu.
Conference sessions will be held in the Latin Quarter, at the centrally located Institut du monde anglophone of the University of Paris III Sorbonne nouvelle. In addition to panel sessions and a peer seminar (see below), excursions such as a walking tour of relevant sites and visits to the old Opera House, the Louvre, and the new National Library are being planned for the week. Please watch the Eliot Society's website (http://www.luc.edu/eliot) for further information.
Call for Peer Seminar Participants: "Eliot and France”
This year's peer seminar, to be led by Andrzej Gasiorek (University of Birmingham), will focus on Eliot's relation to France, broadly construed to include, for example, the influence of the Symbolists and other French writers; of Bergson, Maritain, Maurras and other thinkers; all aspects of Eliot's year in Paris, including his experience of French culture, his studies, his friendships with Jean Verdenal and Alain-Fournier, and his later recollections; Eliot's poems in French; his use of the French language in his other writings; his publication of Proust, Valéry, Cocteau, etc.; his attitude toward French intellectual culture in comparison with those of his modernist contemporaries; and his influence in France. This list of possible topics is not meant to be exhaustive, and participants are welcome to focus on other aspects of the general topic.
Andrzej Gasiorek, who earned his PhD from McGill University, is currently a Reader in Twentieth-Century Literature at the University of Birmingham. He is the author of three monographs: Postwar British Fiction: Realism and After (1995), Wyndham Lewis and Modernism (2003), and J. G. Ballard (2005). He has also co-edited several collections of essays, among them T. E. Hulme and the Question of Modernism; Ford Madox Ford: Literary Networks and Cultural Transformations; The Oxford History of the Novel in English Vol. 4: The Reinvention of the British Novel 1880–1940; and The Oxford Handbook of Modernisms. He is co-editor of the journal Modernist Cultures and editor of the Journal of Wyndham Lewis Studies.
The seminar is open to the first 15 registrants; registration will close March 15th. Participants will submit 4–5 page position papers by e-mail, no later than June 15th. To sign up, or for answers to questions, please write Jayme Stayer at jayme.stayer@gmail.com.
2011 Memorial Lecturer: Jean-Michel Rabaté
The Eliot Society is pleased to announce that Jean-Michel Rabaté will join us as this year's T. S. Eliot Memorial Lecturer. The Vartan Gregorian Professor in the Humanities at the University of Pennsylvania, Rabaté has previously taught at Princeton, Université de Montréal, Manchester, Paris 8 and Dijon. One of the founders and curators of Slought Foundation in Philadelphia (slought.org), he is also a managing editor of the Journal of Modern Literature. Since 2008 he has been a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is the president of the American Beckett Studies association.
Professor Rabaté has authored or edited more than thirty books on modernism, psychoanalysis, contemporary art, philosophy, and writers like Beckett, Pound and Joyce. Recent books include Lacan Literario (Siglo 21, 2007), 1913: The Cradle of Modernism (Blackwell, 2007), The Ethic of the Lie (The Other Press, 2008), and Etant donnés: 1) l'art, 2) le crime(Presses du Reel, 2010). Currently, he is completing a book on Beckett and editing an anthology on modernism and literary theory.