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Roxana Preda <[log in to unmask]>
Fri, 16 Aug 2013 13:39:42 +0100
text/plain (99 lines)
Dear Poundians,

As you all know, The Ezra Pound Society has the major mission of  
organising conference sessions and panels so that Poundians can  
present their work and projects to the scholarly community. Until now,  
the EPS has had two slots at the MLA in January and two slots at the  
American Literature Association Conference in May. Preparations for  
the MLA participation were made in February this year: Demetres  
organised a session on literature and technology for the MLA 2014.

The very good news is that our colleague Prof. Alan Golding, who has  
now been appointed Director of the Louisville Conference, has offered  
the society a regular slot for this prestigious annual event. The  
Louisville Conference is dedicated to literature after 1900 and its  
connections with the other arts: it has run for 41 years now and is  
attended on average by 500 scholars.
Alan tells me people come gladly year after year (and not only for the  
music, excellent restaurants and the bourbon!). Have a look at the  
conference website here:	 http://www.thelouisvilleconference.com/

I asked Alan about how the Louisville conference compares to the MSA.
This is what he told me:

?Compared to MSA, it's somewhat smaller (about 500 people), and we  
don't use MSA's seminar structure. We have a somewhat smaller book  
exhibit, but still a pretty good-size Scholar's Choice table, and the  
U of Iowa Press is now a presence too. Creative writing is a much  
stronger presence here than at MSA; we run creative and critical  
panels simultaneously, and of our four featured speaker slots, two are  
devoted to creative writing. I'm in touch with Colson Whitehead about  
coming in 2014, and we still need to book our poet; our critical  
speakers, Lauren Berlant and Peter Nicholls (of obvious interest to  
Poundians), are in place. ? There's the full range of participants,  
from grad students to full profs and name chairs. ? this would be an  
opportunity to gather for folks working on the MLA Approaches to  
Teaching Pound, among other possibilities.?

It is for us to shape our session according to our interests and  
pursuits, which gives us a much-needed freedom to study Pound in  
context and interact with scholars engaged in all areas of modernism.  
Other author societies, like the T.S. Eliot and Wallace Stevens ones,  
are regulars at the Louisville Conference. I have taken up contact  
with the Eliot society UK, which has started its own call for papers  
for Louisville  ? it is a modest beginning but in due course we could  
have stable channels of cooperation and organise joint sessions or  
other projects.

The deadline for submissions is October 1st 2013.
Please send a 300 word abstract and separate cover sheet to  
[log in to unmask] to participate in this first session we organise  
for the Louisville conference as a society.

The cover sheet should include:
?	Name (as it will appear in the program)
?	Address (preferably home address)
?	E-mail address (necessary to confirm your acceptance)
?	Telephone number
?	Academic affiliation (if applicable)
?	Title of paper/work (as it will appear in the program)
?	National origin/genre of work discussed (please be specific)
?	Personal biographical note (100-150 words

Depending on the nature of the work you submit, I will devise an  
inclusive theme, rationale and title for our session.

To conclude:
Through our organisation we are fortunate to have what could be called  
a stable ?conference season? running from January through May (MLA,  
Louisville, ALA). Let us use it to present our work, discuss it with  
peers, and establish contacts.

My promise to you at this point is that the participants in the  
Louisville Conference will be the first to benefit from a website I  
plan to create for the EPS. At present, most of us have to wait up to  
four years to see our work published, or at least posted somewhere for  
public attention. As people in my family used to say (a lot): ?This  
situation is intolerable. It can?t and shouldn?t last!?

The least we can do is post the conference abstracts on the website,  
so that we have a running record of what we work on. For those of you  
who have a project ready and are willing to show it to peers, the  
society website could be a working option, permanent or temporary, as  
you choose.

I am now preparing a white paper with proposals, so as to let you know  
what such a website could be like. I hope to finish a draft by the end  
of September and look forward to your input and ideas.

Please use the email address above to write to me on any concerns,  
queries and proposals about the EPS you might have.

With all my best,
Roxana


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