Call for Papers
The programming committee is looking for good proposals for panel presentations during this year’s third annual conference of the Norman Mailer Society, to be held in Provincetown, MA, in November of 2005.
Please send your proposals (a 600-800 word abstract) or your complete paper (up to ten pages, double spaced) by June 10, 2005, to the program committee chair:
Robert Begiebing <Rbegiebing comcast net>
Or
P.O. Box 19
Newfields, NH 03856
Email proposals and papers (as Word attachments) are preferred, but postal submissions are acceptable.
Keynote: E. L. Doctorow
Edgar Lawrence Doctorow, the distinguished novelist, was born in New York City in 1931. He is a 1952 graduate of Kenyon College and took graduate courses in English at Columbia University. He was senior editor for New American Library from 1959-1964 and editor-in-chief at Dial Press from 1964-1969. He has taught at several major universities and currently holds the Glucksman Chair in American Letters at New York University. He was elected to the American Academy and the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1984.
He is the author of seven novels, including The Book of Daniel (1971), which was nominated for a National Book award; Ragtime (1975), which won the First National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction as well as the Arts and Letters Award from the National Institute of Arts and Letters; and World’s Fair (1986) which won the National Book Award. He is also the author of a collection of short fiction, Lives of the Poets (1984) and a play, Drinks Before Dinner (1979). Doctorow’s latest novel, The March, was published by Random House on 20 September 2005. Based on extensive research on General Sherman’s March through Georgia and the Carolinas, the novel presents a rich cavalcade of characters from the North and the South, including the moody general himself.
Doctorow’s work is both lively and erudite and quite varied in form and prose style. He often uses actual historical figures such as Houdini, Emma Goldman, Teddy Roosevelt and Dutch Schultz. He is one of the most important living American novelists.
After the Conference
The Norman Mailer Society extends its appreciation and gratitude to all presenters who participated at the 2005 Conference held in Provincetown on November 5 and 6. Their panel contributions made for an informative and enlightening experience for everyone in attendance. Their names and the panels they presented follow.
- Allen Ahearn (Quill and Brush Books), “Collecting Mailer”
- Robert Begiebing (Southern New Hampshire University), “Mailer on the Eve of Ancient Evenings.”
- Lawrence Broer (Emeritus Professor of English, University of South Florida), “Identity Crisis: A State of the Union Address by Norman Mailer and Kurt Vonnegut”
- Philip Bufithis (Shepherd College), “Dramatic Reading of An American Dream”
- Tara Carlin (Central Connecticut State University), “Norman Mailer’s Of Women and Their Elegance.”
- Michael Chaiken (Program Director for Film at International House Philadelphia), “Mailer Makes Movies”
- Bonnie Culver (Wilkes University), “Dramatic Dialogues.” Assisting Bonnie was Master of Arts in Creative Writing Faculty members Ken Vose and Jan Quackenbush. Students were Daniel Burda, James Warner, Jennifer Diskin, Christopher Hodorowski, Drew Amoroso and Nicole DePolo
- Constance E. Holmes (University of South Florida), “The Law and An American Dream.”
- Ashton Howley (University of Ottawa), “Mailer Again.”
- Mark James (Wilkes University), “A Second Look at Authorial Intentionality and Norman Mailer’s Revisions of An American Dream.”
- Don L. Kaufmann (University of South Florida), “Collecting Mailer”
- Randy Laist (University of Connecticut), “Slimy Vampires and Sliding Saints: Dispersal of Being in An American Dream.”
- Barry H. Leeds (Central Connecticut State University), “Dramatic Reading of An American Dream”
- Joseph A. Lennon (Manhattan College) and J. Michael Lennon (Wilkes University), “Perspectives on Mailer’s Poetry”
- David Light (Scituate High School, Principal), “Collecting Mailer”
- Robert F. Lucid (University of Pennsylvania), “Mailer Makes Movies”
- Michael Mailer (Michael Mailer Films), “Mailer Makes Movies”
- Robbin Martinelli (Central Connecticut State University), “The Eve Syndrome in An American Dream.”
- Deborah Martinson (Occidental College), “Norman Mailer and Lillian Hellman: ‘Half Friendly; Half Chilled’.”
- Sabrina McLaughlin (Binghampton University), “Saints and Sinners ‘Over the Mountainous Abode’: The Role of Place in The Executioner’s Song.”
- Linda Patterson Miller (Pennsylvania State University), “Mailer vs. Hemingway in the Gender Wars of the 20th Century.”
- Scott Morrison (Central Connecticut State University), “Behind the Bathroom Door: Gallagher’s Wife as a Female Human Being in Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead.”
- Phillip Sipiora (University of South Florida), “Norman Mailer and Ernest Hemingway: The Hand and the Fist.”
- Mark Triplett (Esq.), “The Political Mailer: The Left Conservative through the Decades.”
- Raymond Vince (University of South Florida), “Novels, Gospels, and the Struggle for Reality: Norman Mailer’s The Gospel According to the Son.”