CALL
FOR PAPERS
Robert Frost Society
Modern Language Association Annual Convention
Seattle
January 9 - 12,
2020
For its MLA Annual Convention 2020 (Seattle) panel, The Robert Frost Society seeks papers on Robert Frost and fiction, broadly construed: his reading in fiction
and links with novelists; his prose stories; his narrative poems and fictive speakers; fiction and “lyric reading”;
supreme fictions; dishonesty, gossip, invention. Updated deadline for submissions: Monday, March 25, 2019. Send to Professor Calista McRae, New Jersey Inst. of Tech (mcrae@njit.edu).
CALLS
FOR PAPERS
Robert Frost Society
American Literature Association 30th Annual
Conference
Boston, MA
May 23-26, 2019 at the Westin Copley Place
Session I: “Robert Frost and
Animal Studies”
“We were lost piecemeal to the animals, / Like people thrown out to
delay the wolves,” Robert Frost wrote famously in his poem “The White-Tailed Hornet” of the modern trend
to investigate animality in humans. Robert Frost Society invites new essays on Robert Frost’s life and work which would
engage some of the critical frameworks being developed today in animal studies. The poet’s scornful remarks on dogs
in “Mending Wall” and “The Rabbit Hunter” would suggest typical arrogance of human exceptionalism.
Other dog poems, however, like "One More Brevity" or "Canis Major" greatly complicate or disprove such
easy conclusions. So does his lifelong preoccupation with Darwin. We welcome new studies investigating such motifs as human-animal
relationships, human exceptionalism, posthumanism, indigenous people as animals, madmen as animals, pet keeping, domestic
animal breeding, casual murders of animals, etc. in his poems, poultry stories, and letters. Stories about champion chickens,
poems told from the view of woodchucks, question-asking horses, socially sensitive birds—all wait to be reconceptualized
in the new critical terms of animal studies. Of course, we would also consider more general studies involving Robert Frost’s
animal motifs. Contact:
Grzegorz Kosc, 2019 President of Robert Frost Society, grzegorz.kosc@uw.edu.pl Deadline for proposals: January
15, 2019; expected length: 300-350 words
Session II: “Robert
Frost’s Political Philosophy”
Frost’s work constitutes a very rich field for an extensive inquiry by political
philosophers and literary scholars interested in political philosophy. The poetry and thought of Frost echo many of the key
concerns of contemporary political theory. Among possible themes one might explore is Frost’s recognition of politics
as a necessary self-defense against nature (very much in touch with the post-Machiavellian-Hobbesian modern philosophic view
that man must conquer nation for the improvement of the human condition); his complex reflection on such notions as utopia,
individualism, disloyalty, as well as the good of war as the greatest school of virtue and as a great existential experience.
One may also look into his rejection of the notion of the just war, his critique of democracy and of the New Deal progressivism,
his Burkean reflection on elected politicians' answerability to themselves rather than to their electorate; finally, into
his balancing act between states' rights and the federal unity. These and several other issues, repeatedly explored by Frost
in his poems, notebooks and speeches, have been largely unexamined. Contact: Grzegorz Kosc, 2019 President of Robert Frost Society,
grzegorz.kosc@uw.edu.pl Deadline for proposals: January 15, 2019; expected length: 300-350 words
