Eudora Welty Society

Abstract

Eudora Welty Society Donnie McMahand and Kevin Murphy After two years of virtual events during the height of the COVID pandemic, the Eudora Welty Society made a much-anticipated return to inperson conferences in 2022. At the May conference of the American Literature Association (ALA) in Chicago, the Society met and conducted its annual business meeting with current officers presiding: Donnie McMahand and Kevin Murphy, Presidents; Rebecca Harrison, Vice President; and Laura Wilson, Treasurer. Additionally, the society sponsored two panels, a roundtable, and a reprised dramatic reading of Welty's "Moon Lake," led by adaptor and director Brenda Currin and performed by Welty scholars. (Thereafter, Laura Wilson interviewed Brenda Currin for the Eudora Welty Review volume 14, 2022.) In June, the society sponsored two panels at the biennial conference for the Society for the Study of Southern Literature (SSSL). The Society also presented a roundtable in October at the ALA Symposium "The Historical Imagination in American Literature" in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The year 2022 marked a transition to a new listserv for the Society, replacing the old listserv hosted by Emory University. All future Society correspondence should be directed to our new listserv at eudorawelty society@baylor.edu. Society members are also eligible for numerous awards sponsored by the EWS. The Society regularly supports young Welty scholars by awarding travel grants to graduate students presenting at ALA. Recipients for 2022 included Jacob Agner, Summer Delgado, Nathaniel Hawlish, and Grace McCright, who each received $100. In conjunction with the Eudora Welty Review, the Society awards the annual Ruth Vande Kieft prize for an outstanding essay on Welty. The 2022 prize of $150 went to Judy Butterfield for her essay "'An Is Different from My Is': The Lost Mother and the Subjectivity of the Motherless Child in Faulkner's As I Lay Dying and Welty's Delta Wedding," which appeared in volume 14 of this journal. At the 2022 SSSL conference, the society [End Page 193] honored two recipients of the biennial Phoenix Award given to a scholar who has made considerable contributions to Welty studies. Since the pandemic precluded public recognition of the 2019–2020 winner, David McWhirter, the Society recognized both David and the 2021–2022 winner, Mae Miller Claxton. The Critical Perspectives on Eudora Welty series published by the University Press of Mississippi released three new volumes in 2022: Eudora Welty and Mystery: Hidden In Plain Sight (Dec. 2022), edited by Jacob Agner and Harriet Pollack; The Eye That Is Language: A Transatlantic View of Eudora Welty (May 2022) by Danièle Pitavy-Souques and editor Pearl Amelia McHaney; and Exposing Mississippi: Eudora Welty's Photographic Reflections (Mar. 2022) by Annette Trefzer, which won the 2022 Eudora Welty Prize. All three volumes can be purchased on the University Press of Mississippi's website: upress.state.ms.us. For further information about these volumes' contents and contributors, see the Checklist of Welty Scholarship elsewhere in this issue. The Eudora Welty Society will host two panels and a roundtable at the 2023 American Literature Association Conference in Boston. Topics include 1) Material Welty Roundtable, 2) Gender, Objects, and Welty, and 3) The Sensual, Sexual, and Erotic Welty. Below is a detailed list of the conference panels hosted by the Eudora Welty Society in 2022: American Literature Association Conference, May 26–28, 2022, Chicago, Illinois Eudora Welty and Performance Chair: Harriet Pollack, College of Charleston 1. "Stagestruck: Eudora Welty and the Theater," Suzanne Marrs, Millsaps College 2. "'That's me': Eudora Welty and the Performative Self," Katie Berry Frye, Pepperdine University 3. "The (Cinematic) Eye of Her Story: Eudora Welty and Film," Jacob Agner, University of Mississippi 4. "Eudora Welty's Cinematic Spaces: Inhabiting 'Why I live at the P.O,'" Dina Smith, Drake University 5. "On the Process of Adapting Eudora Welty for Performance," Brenda Currin, Independent Scholar, Actress, and Adaptor [End Page 194] Eudora Welty and Ecology Chair: Sarah Ford, Baylor University 1. "'It was said she believed in evolution': An Ecogothic Reading of 'Moon Lake,'" Grace McCright, Baylor University 2. "Eudora Welty's Dual Vision of Arcadia," Pearl McHaney, Georgia State University 3. "Laurel's Influx and Efflux: Reading the Non-human in The Optimist's Daughter," Nathaniel...