Schedule and Papers
“Cather as
Cultural Icon”
International
Cather Seminar
May 28 – June 2, 2003
WEDNESDAY
– May 28, 2003
12:00 – 5:00 Registration,
Bread Loaf Inn
2:00 – 3:00 “Willa
Cather’s Northeast: A literary fieldguide”
Sherrill Harbison, editor.,
The Five Colleges, Amherst, MA, Theatre
3:30 – 4:30 History
of Bread Loaf. Jim Maddox, Theatre
5:00 – 6:30 Opening plenary session
Introduction:
Robert Thacker
Susan Rosowski. “Portrait of an
Icon.”
Mark Madigan. “Willa Cather and the Book-of-the-Month
Club”
6:30 – 8:00 Dinner.
Welcome, introductions, announcements, Dining
Room
8:00 – 10:00 Reception.
Music.
THURSDAY – May 29, 2003
7:15 – 8:15 Breakfast
and announcements, Dining Room
8:30 – 10:00 Plenary Speakers, Theatre
Introduction: Tom Quirk
Janis Stout. “1922: Catcher breaks
Bread (Loaf) with her Public”
Robert Thacker. “E. K. Brown and
Writing Cather’s First Biography”
10:00 – 10:30 Break,
Theatre Terrace
10:30 – 12:00 Concurrent paper sessions,
Classrooms
A. Cather’s Literary Communities
Chair: Sharon Hoover
Nancy Chinn. “Louise Guiney and
Willa Cather.”
Andrew Jewell. “Willa Cather’s
Greenwich Village”
Sharon Hoover. “Echoes of Willa
Cather Ring Strong and True”
Melissa J. Homestead and Anne L. Kaufman. “A Work in Progress: An Initial Look at Recovering Edith Lewis as an Intellectual Presence in Cather’s Life”
B. Region and Reputation
Chair: Guy Reynolds
Kristen Klement
Ware. “Rose-Colored Glasses: Jim Burden and Nebraska Prairie Politics”
Kari Ronning. “Small Town Goddesses”
Kristianne Kalata. Reading the
Prairie, Writing the Past: Layers of Landscape and Memory in Cather’s My Ántonia”
Leona Sevick. “Arts and Crafts on
Cather’s Frontier”
C. Collecting Cather
Chair: Katherine Walter
Betty Kort. Executive Director, The
Willa Cather Pioneer Memorial. Red Cloud, NE
Katherine Walter. “The Archival Cather: Willa Cather
Collections at the University of Nebraska”
David Porter. “Cather Materials at Drew University”
Mary Lynne McDermott. “Finding a
Cultural Icon by Collecting her Memorabilia”
Mary Weddle. “Inheriting a Legacy”
12:15 – 1:15 Lunch,
Dining Room
1:30 – 2:15 Plenary Speaker, Theatre
Introduction: Ann Romines
Tom
Quirk. “Willa Cather's Eyes and the
Obligations of Textual Editing”
2:15 – 3:30 Break,
Theatre terrace and on your own
3:30 – 4:30 Keynote address: Robert Pinsky, Barn
Introduction: Susan Rosowski
4:30 – 5:30 Book signing, Barn
6:00 – 7:00 Dinner,
Dining Room
7:30 – 8:30 Student Welcome, Barn–hosted by UNL
graduate students & sponsored by Teaching
Cather editors Steve Shively and Virgil Albertini, Northwest Missouri State
University
7:30 – 8:30 Staff Meeting, Theatre
8:30 – Frothingham Open House(BYOB)
FRIDAY – May 30, 2003
7:15 – 8:15 Breakfast
and announcements, Dining Room
8:30 – 10:00 Plenary speakers, Theatre
Introduction: John Swift
Ann Romines. “Willa Cather and the Iconic American Quilt”
Guy Reynolds. “Willa Cather as
Equivocal Icon”
10:00 – 10:30 Break,
Theatre Terrace
10:30 – 12:00 Concurrent paper sessions,
Classrooms
A. “I’ll be glad to
take Thea to Chicago and see that she gets started right.”
Chair: Joseph Murphy
Jane K. Dressler. “Cather as
Cultural Observer: Chicago and Its Music”
Susan Meyer. “Popular Culture in
Cather: The ‘Fresh Air Cranks’”
Anthony M. Millspaugh. “The Earth
Mother and the Merchant Prince”
Mark A. Robison. “City and Prairie
Entwining: Alexandra’s Divide as Nature’s Metropolis”
B. Iconic Intersections
Chair: Elsa Nettels
Josie Davis. “The Absent Icon: The
Influence of Jenny Lind on The Song of
the Lark”
Lance Weldy. “Crossing the Gendered,
Spatial Divide: Contrasting Female Immigrant Experiences in Cather’s My Ántonia & Rolvaag’s Giants in the Earth”
Marv Friedman: “Whose Life is it
Anyway?: Any Truth to Cather’s Denial that Thea Kronborg was based on Olive
Fremstad?”
Mary E. Swain. “Jeanne Le Ber: The
Icon’s Icon: A Study of Cather’s Own Interest in her Character”
C.
An American Classic (My Ántonia--text as forum)
Chair: Kari Ronning
Catherine Holmes. “Deserts of the
Mind: My Ántonia and Modernism”
Shamim Ansari. “The ‘Poetry of
Motion’ in My Ántonia”
Margaret Doane. “Action without Reaction: Cather’s use of Violence
as a Device for Revealing Character”
Diana Polley. “My Ántonia:
Willa Cather’s Cultural Retrospective”
12:15 – 1:15 Lunch,
Dining Room
1:30 – 2:30 Concurrent paper sessions,
Classrooms
A. National Conversations
Chair: Charles Peek
John Jacobs. “Willa Cather, Hester
Prynne, and Huck Finn’s Mother”
Leona Sevick. “Arts and Crafts on
Cather’s Frontier”
Christian Sisack. “‘You had only to
look at the lake, and you knew you would soon be free:’ The Professor’s House as Utopian Text”
B. Iconic Real Estate
Chair: Steven Trout
Emily Malino Scheuer. “Iconic Real
Estate: Willa Cather’s Respect for Property”
Kathryn Taylor.” The Professor’s House/Museum: Cather's Public Domesticity In Fiction and Myth”
Martin Zehr. “A Tale of
Two Villagers: The Western Icons of Red Cloud and Hannibal”
C. Gay Iconography
Chair: Marilee Lindemann
Catherine Kunce. “Decoding Homosexuality
in ‘Paul’s Case’: A study in critical temperament”
Phyllis L. Pustilnik. “Culture of
the Religious Insider and Gay and Lesbian Outsider in the Titles of Cather’s
Novels & Stories”
3:15 – 4:45 Plenary Speakers, Theatre
Introduction: Joe Urgo
Marilee Lindemann. “'Just Plain
Billy': Cather as Queer Icon”
John Swift. “Cather, Freudianism,
and Freud”
aft/eve Rehearsal
– Ford/Bybee, Barn
6:00 – 7:00 Dinner,
Dining Room
7:30 – 9:00 Re/Presenting Cather: Film, TV,
&Theater, Barn
Chair: Merrill Skaggs
Eleanor Hersey. “Competing Wills:
Television Film makers and Cather”
Bette-B Bauer. “Landscape as Set
Design in the Opera, Eric Hermannson’s
Soul”
Joel Geyer and Christine Lesiak.
Creating the NET Film Biography for American Masters
9:00 – Entertainment and mystery speaker
7:15 – 8:15 Breakfast
and announcements, Dining Room
8:30 – 10:00 Plenary Speakers, Theatre
Introduction: John J. Murphy
Merrill Skaggs. “ICON-oclastic
Cather”
Steven Trout. “Antithetical Icons?:
Another Look at Cather and Hemingway”
10:00 – 10:30 Break,
Theatre Terrace
10:30 – 12:00 Concurrent paper
sessions, Classroom
A. Negotiating Celebrity
Chair: Janis Stout
Amy Ahearn. “Cather as War Reporter:
Journalism, Reputation, and One of Ours”
Nora Dooley (University at Buffalo).
“The Maturing of Thea Kronborg.”
Michael Schueth. “Cather, Steichen,
and VanityFair: Portrait of Celebrity
Culture”
Stephen M. Monroe. “Influence and
Development: The Artistic Intersection where Fitzgerald Meets Cather”
B. Literary Nation Building
Chair: Sherrill Harbison
Amanda Johnson. “Narrating the New
Woman in Cather & Hemingway”
Cheryl C. Swift. “Taking Care of the
West: Stewardship, Willa Cather, and Edward Abbey”
Joyce Kessler. “Notes on Cather’s
National Narrative: Race and Representation in Sapphira and the Slave Girl”
Heather Alumbaugh. “As everyone
knows, Nebraska is distinctly déclassé as a literary background’: The Uses of
Region in O Pioneers!”
C. Crossing Cultures
Chair: Michael Peterman
Carmen Trammell
Skaggs. “‘An Overtone Divined by the Ear’: Opera in Cather’s Fiction”
Ann Tschetter. “From Virginia to
Nebraska: The Culture of the Cather Family”
Richard Harris. “The French
Connection: Willa Cather and Henri Barbusse”
Joshua Dolezal. “‘The Guardian of
the Stomach’: Euclid Auclair’s Healing Art”
12:15 – 1:15 Lunch,
Dining Room
1:30 – 3:00 Concurrent paper
sessions, Classrooms
A. Creating Images that Last
Chair: Richard Harris
Nichole Bennett. “The Lasting Image
of Alexander: Imagism and Vorticism in Alexander’s
Bridge”
Jonathan Gross. “Recollecting
Emotion in Tranquility: Wordsworth, Byron, and Cather’s Romantic Imagination in
My Ántonia and Lucy Gayheart.”
Patrick K. Dooley. “William James’s
Concept of the ‘Specious Present’ and Cather’s Phenomenology of Memory”
Charles Peek. “Breeding Grounds:
Cather and Icons for the New Generation”
B. Advertising Cather
Chair: Margaret O’Connor
Erika K. Hamilton. “Advertising
Cather During the Transition Years”
David Humphries. “Advertising the
Artist in Cather’s Fiction of the Late 1910s”
C. Cather in the Classroom
Chair: Robert Miller
Grace Crawford. “An Approach to
Teaching Cather: English 112 & History 270"
Reginald Dyck. “Bringing Students
into the Critical Conversation: My
Ántonia and the Feminist Critique.”
Elaine E. Limbaugh. “The Hidden
Narrator: Cather Speaks”
3:15 – 5:30 Break,
Theatre and Discussions
6:00 – 7:00 Dinner, Dining Room
7:30 The Bohemian Girl, Ariel
Bybee & James Ford, Barn
7:15 – 8:15 Breakfast
and announcements, Dining Room
8:30 – 10:30 At the Pinnacle of Cather’s
Career. Plenary Speakers, Theatre
Introduction: Charles Mignon
Richard
Millington. “Auto-iconization” in Shadows
on the Rock
John J. Murphy. “Cather’s Shadows: Solid Rock and Sacred Canopy”
Joe Urgo. “The text was mainly
anacoluthon,” she said. “Why tear a man loose from his little rock and shoot
him out into the eternities?”
10:30 – 11:00 Break,
Theatre Terrace
11:00 – 12:00 Concurrent paper sessions, Classrooms
A. A Few Human Stories
Chair:
Charles Peek
Jessica G. Rabin. “Two or Three
Human Stories: O Pioneers! and the
Old Testament”
Seymour W. Pustilnik. “Culture of
the Twelve Tribes of Israel in the Titles of Cather’s Twelve Novels”
Wendy K. Perriman. “Willa Cather:
Prejudice . . . Utterly Slain”
B. Questions of Class
Chair: Amy Ahearn
Mary Chinery. “Carnival, Sexuality,
and Class in My Ántonia and Shadows on the Rock”
Joseph Murphy. “‘Double Birthday’:
The Dialectics of Seeing in Cather’s Pittsburgh”
Jennifer Bradley. “Willa Cather and
the Servant Problem”
12:15 – 1:15 Lunch,
Dining Room
1:30 – 3:00 Concurrent paper sessions,
Classrooms
A. Whatever are the
critics doing?
Chair: Steve Shively
Margaret O’Connor. “The Litmus Test
of Culture: Cather and her Contemporary Reviewers”
Michael Peterman. “‘The subtle
failure of her admirable talent’: Lionel Trilling at odds with Miss Cather”
Steven B. Shively. “Cather in English Journal: A Case Study”
Elsa Nettels. “What Happens to
Criticism When the Artist Becomes an Icon?”
B. Defending the Text
Chair: Richard Millington
Kristin G. Bensen-Hause. “Cather’s
Marie: A Misunderstood Innocent.”
Robert Miller. “Icons of Hospitality
in My Ántonia”
Charles Mignon. “Cather’s Legible
Complexity: composer demeuble”
Timothy C. Blackburn. “‘Have I
Changed So Much?’: Jim Burden and the Endings of My Ántonia and Sapphira and
the Slave Girl”
C. Perilous Success
Chair: Mark Madigan
Bob Cowser. “The Siren Success in
‘Coming, Aphrodite!’”
Isabella Caruso. “When the Bloom is
Off: Cather’s Artist in Maturity”
Kelly Garneau. “Rethinking Tom
Outland’s Engine: When the Artist
Becomes a Name”
Laura M. Barlament. “Honey to the
Throat / But poison in the blood”: Tristan in The Troll Garden”
3:15 – 3:45 Break,
Theatre
3:45 – 4:45 Prospects
for Cather Studies. Plenary panel, Theatre
6:00 – Farewell
Cookout, Bread Loaf Green
MONDAY – June 2, 2003
7:00 – 10:30 Send-off
breakfast, Dining Room