SEMINAR PARTICIPANTS

Keynote Speakers

TERRY EAGLETON
Terry Eagleton is Professor of Cultural Theory and John Rylands Fellow at the University of Manchester, and before that Thomas Wharton Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford. He has been a Fellow of five Oxford and Cambridge Colleges, and became at the age of 21 the youngest Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge since the 18th century. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, a holder of five honorary doctorates, and the author of some forty books of criticism and cultural and political theory. The author of a novel, and of plays which have been produced in London and Dublin and on British TV and BBC radio, he also wrote the screenplay of Derek Jarman’s film Wittgenstein. He has lectured frequently in the USA, Canada, Europe Australia, India, Russia, China, and South-East Asia, and appears often in the British and Irish media. His latest works include a study of tragedy, Sweet Violence; After Theory; and a forthcoming study of terrorism, Holy Terror.

MICHÈLE BARALE
Michèle Barale is Professor of English and Women’s and Gender Studies at Amherst College. Her writings include A Kwic Concordance to Samuel Beckett’s Trilogy: Molloy, Malone Dies, and the Unnamable (1988). She is one of the editors, along with Henry Abelove and David Halperin, of The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader (1995), has written articles on Ann Bannon, Radclyffe Hall, Aliens as well as a variety of pedagogical issues. Her current work focuses on the extra-literary and aesthetic influences that shape Willa Cather’s work. She has an article forthcoming this summer, “The Art of Darkness: WIlla Cather’s Aesthetics” in Looking Forward, Looking Back.

Seminar Faculty

RICHARD HARRIS is professor and Director of Humanities at the Webb Institute in Glen Cove, NY. He has published many articles on Willa Cather and is the volume editor of the Cather Scholarly Edition of One of Ours (Spring 2006).

MARILEE LINDEMANN is associate professor of English and director of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies at the University of Maryland. She is the author of Willa Cather: Queering America and essays about Cather, Sarah Orne Jewett, and queer literary history. She edited Alexander’s Bridge and O Pioneers! for Oxford University Press as well as the recent Cambridge Companion to Willa Cather. She is currently at work on a Norton Critical Edition of My Ántonia.

MARK MADIGAN is associate professor of English at Nazareth College of Rochester and the volume editor of the Cather Scholarly Edition of Youth and the Bright Medusa (Fall 2006). He has published articles on Cather in numerous journals, edited volumes of letters and stories by Dorothy Canfield Fisher, and was a Fulbright Scholar in Ljubljana, Slovenia, last year.

JOHN J. MURPHY is professor of English at Brigham Young University, where he edited the scholarly journal Literature and Belief from 1994 to 2004. He is the author of My Ántonia: The Road Home and more than seventy essays on Cather and other American writers, volume editor of the Cather Scholarly Edition of Death Comes for the Archbishop and volume co-editor of Shadows on the Rock (Fall 2005). He serves on the Board of Governors of the Willa Cather Pioneer Memorial and on the editorial board of the Cather Edition. He is presently at work on a book-length study emphasizing the historical and religious dimensions of Cather’s fiction.

DAVID PORTER is Harry C. Payne Visiting Professor of Liberal Arts at Williams College. Prior to coming to Williams he taught classics and music at Carleton College and was president of Skidmore College. He is the author of books and monographs on Horace, Greek tragedy, and Virginia Woolf and is currently writing a book on Willa Cather.

TOM QUIRK is professor of American literature and culture at the University of Missouri-Columbia. He is the volume editor of the Cather Scholarly Edition of Alexander’s Bridge (Spring 2006) and coeditor of a three-volume encyclopedia of American Culture entitled American History through Literature (2005). His books include Mark Twain: A Study of Short Fiction; Bergson and American Culture: The Worlds of Willa Cather and Wallace Stevens; and Melville’s Confidence Man: From Knave to Knight.

GUY REYNOLDS is professor of English at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. He is Director of the Cather Project and general editor of the Cather Scholarly Edition and Cather Studies. He is the author of two books, Willa Cather in Context: Progress, Race, Empire (1996) and Twentieth-Century American Women’s Fiction (1999). His most recent work is an extensive compendium of Cather scholarship, Willa Cather: Critical Assessments (2003).

ANN ROMINES is professor of English and director of Graduate Studies in English at George Washington University; she is the author of The Home Plot: Women, Writing and Domestic Ritual; Constructing the Little House: Gender, Culture, and Laura Ingalls Wilder, and has published many essays on Cather, appearing in collections such as The Cambridge Companion to Willa Cather and Cather Studies 5. She is volume editor of the Cather Scholarly Edition of Sapphira and the Slave Girl ( Fall 2006), editor of Willa Cather’s Southern Connections: New Essays on Cather and the South and had essays in Cather Studies 1, 3, and 5.

MERRILL SKAGGS is Baldwin Professor of the Humanities at Drew University, and is the author of After the World Broke in Two: The Later Novels of Willa Cather; The Folk of Southern Fiction; and many essays on Cather and Southern writers. She is the editor of Willa Cather’s New York: New Essays on Cather in the City.

JANIS STOUT is former Dean of Faculties and Associate Provost at Texas A&M University, where she was Professor of English. She is the author of Through the Window, Out the Door: Women’s Narratives of Departure, from Austin and Cather to Tyler, Morrison, and Didion; Katherine Anne Porter: A Sense of the Times; and Willa Cather: The Writer and Her World. She is the editor of A Calendar of the Letters of Willa Cather, soon to be published in full on the Cather website at UNL, and the recently published Willa Cather and Material Culture: Real-World Writing, Writing the Real World. Her newest book, Coming Out of War: Poetry, Culture, and the World Wars, will be published by the University of Alabama Press in 2005.

JOHN SWIFT is professor of English and Comparative Literary Studies at Occidental College and a past president of the Willa Cather Pioneer Memorial and Educational Foundation. He is a scholarly editor of the WCPM Newsletter and Review, the co-editor of Willa Cather and the American Southwest (2002) and author of several essays on Cather and others.

ROBERT THACKER is professor of Canadian Studies and English at St. Lawrence University, and has been Molson Research Fellow there. He codirected the 6th International Seminar in Quebec City and coedited its volume of essays, Cather Studies 4: Willa Cather’s Canadian and Old World Connections. His recent work on Cather has appeared in American Literary Realism, the Canadian Review of American Studies, the Blackwood Companion to the Regional Literature of America, and is forthcoming in Cather Studies 6. His Alice Munro, Writing Her Lives: A Biography is forthcoming from McClelland and Stewart, Toronto.

STEVEN TROUT is professor of English and Director of Composition at Fort Hays State University. He is the author of Memorial Fictions: Willa Cather and the First World War, co-editor of Literature of the Great War Reconsidered: Beyond Modern Memory, and the editor of Cather Studies 7: History, Memory, and War (2006).

JOSEPH URGO is professor and chair of the Department of English at the University of Mississippi. His works include Novel Frames: Literature as a Guide to Race, Sex, and History in American Culture; Willa Cather and the Myth of American Migration, as well as multiple journal articles, book reviews, and encyclopedia entries on Cather and William Faulkner. He was co-editor of Willa Cather and the American Southwest and appears in the pbs production, “The Road is All: Willa Cather” (2005).

Seminar Fellows

Amy Ahearn, is an assistant professor of English at Saddleback College in Mission Viejo, California, where she teaches composition, literature, and humanities. She serves on the Board of Directors for the Honors Program and is faculty advisor to the campus literary journal. Ahearn is currently writing a dissertation on Willa Cather and her work with McClure's Magazine. (2005).

Melissa Homestead who, after four years teaching at the University of Oklahoma, will be an associate professor of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln beginning August 2005. She specializes in the historical study of women's authorship in the U.S. from the early republic through the early 20th-century. Her first book, American Women Authors and Literary Property, 1822-1869, is forthcoming from Cambridge University Press, and she and Anne L. Kaufman are currently collaborating on a study of Edith Lewis's influence on Willa Cather's literary career.

Sharon Hoover is Professor Emeritus of English at Alfred University. She has taught writing and literature at Montana State University and Alfred University, directed a writing center for many years, and has authored numerous articles for education and academic publications. Her most recent book is Remembering Willa Cather (2002).

Anne Kaufman, teaches mathematics at Milton Academy. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Maryland in 2003, and specializes in twentieth century western American and Canadian women's fiction. Her first book is under advance contract to the University of Oklahoma Press. She and Melissa J. Homestead are collaborating on a study of Edith Lewis's influence on Willa Cather's literary career.

Betty Kort has been the Executive Director of the Cather Foundation since the spring of 2003, following a career as a high school English and art teacher at Hastings (Nebraska) Senior High School for 25 years. While teaching, Betty developed a nationally recognized interdisciplinary approach to teaching Cather that involved the Red Cloud Cather Foundation site. She was an NEH Experienced Teacher Scholar, the 1993 Nebraska Teacher of the Year, a National Council of Teachers of English "Classrooms of Excellence" teacher, and a Disney Awards Teacher. Her teaching has been used as a model on the national level by Harvard University in conjunction with the Disney Learning Partnership. Betty served on the Cather Foundation Board of Governors for thirteen years, completing one term as president, prior to becoming the Executive Director. This is the second International Seminar in which Betty has served as a Faculty Fellow.

Charles Mignon is Professor Emeritus in the English Department at UN-L, where he is assigned to the Cather Project part-time as Research Professor. In addition to writing textual essays for the Cather Scholarly Edition, he edited the two-volume edition of Edward Taylor's Upon the Types of the Old Testament (UN Press 1988); as critic he has published essays on Taylor, Emerson, Whitman, Nabokov, and Cather. He is finishing a twenty-year career as tennis umpire, fancies writing on Japanese prints, and will sing the Korean National Anthem on demand.

Ann Moseley William E. Mayo Professor at Texas A&M University-Commerce, is the volume editor for the Scholarly Edition of The Song of the Lark. She has published articles on Cather in Cather Studies, Literature and Belief, Willa Cather Newsletter and Review, and Western American Literature. She is also the author of the Western Writers Series monograph on Ole Rolvaag and the co-author of three composition textbooks: Contexts: Writing and Reading, Interactions: A Thematic Reader, and Strategies for College Writing.

Joseph Murphy is assistant professor of English at Fu Jen Catholic University, Taiwan, and editor of Fu Jen Studies. He has published articles on Whitman, Cather, Flannery O'Connor, and other writers. His book-in-progress is a study of Whitman, Howells, Henry Adams, and the culture of world's fairs.

Elsa Nettels is an emeritus professor at the College of William and Mary, where she taught English and American Literature for 30 years. Her publications include articles on Cather and other writers; the chapter on Cather and Wharton in American Literary Scholarship, 1997-2002; and three books: James and Conrad; Language, Race, and Social Class in Howells's America; and Language and Gender: Howells, James, Wharton, and Cather. She is currently working on a study of representations of readers and reading in American fiction.

Brian Pytlik Zillig is Assistant Professor and Digital Initiatives Librarian in the Electronic Text Center at the UNL Libraries. The Etext Center collaborates with faculty and students in creating and developing digital research projects, and provides forums for the exploration of ideas relating to the creation of digital content. Brian's research interest is in the area of text analysis and the visualization of text. Brian is a participant in several electronic resources, including the Willa Cather Archive, the Walt Whitman Archive, and the Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition Online. The Etext Center website is located at: http://etc.unl.edu/

Kari Ronning is assistant editor of the Cather Scholarly Edition, and volume editor of Obscure Destinies. She is especially interested in Cathers' life and connections in Nebraska, her journalism, and in collecting various printings of Cather books. In other parts of her life she is a quiltmaker, flower gardener, and mother.

Steve Shively is an associate professor of English at Northwest Missouri State University, where he coordinates the English education program and teaches American Literature. He is a member of the Willa Cather Pioneer Memorial and Education Foundation Board of Governors and is co-editor of Teaching Cather. His particular interests in Cather studies include religion in Cather's writing and the teaching of Cather's work.

Katherine L. Walter is Professor and Co-Director of Digital Research in the Humanities at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. As co-director of the CDRH, Walter coordinates activities relating to twenty-five digital projects. Among these are collaborative research efforts of the College of Arts & Sciences, the University of Nebraska Press, and/or the University Libraries, such as the Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition Online funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Virtual Archive of Walt Whitman's Manuscripts funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services. As chair of Digital Initiatives & Special Collections in the University Libraries, Walter has been instrumental in the development of Cather collections at UNL and in the growth of the electronic Willa Cather Archive.