“Wolfe and the City”
The Thomas Wolfe Society’s Fortieth Annual Meeting
Charlotte, North Carolina, June 1-2, 2018
Holiday Inn/Charlotte Center City: Sessions are held in The Mint Ballroom.
Friday, June 1, 2018
8:30-10:30 Board of Directors Meeting—Spirit Room (Second Floor)
11:00-12:00 Registration—Elevator Landing, Second Floor
12:00-12:25 Welcome and Prologue
Welcome: Rebecca Godwin, President, Thomas Wolfe Society; Barton College
Prologue: Mary Aswell Doll, Savannah College of Art and Design
12:25-1:20 Session I (Moderator: Anne R. Zahlan, Eastern Illinois University)
“Charlotte in the Time of Thomas Wolfe and Carson McCullers”
Tom Hanchett, Community Historian—Charlotte, North Carolina
Break (1:20-1:40)
1:40-2:35 Session II (Moderator: Robert G. Anthony Jr., University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill)
“Urban Attitudes: A Reexamination of Thomas Wolfe’s ‘The Party at Jack’s’”
Edwin Yoder, Chapel Hill, North Carolina
“Thomas Wolfe’s Satirical Attack on Alexander Calder: The Piggy Logan Episode in ‘The Party at Jack’s’”
David Madden, Black Mountain, North Carolina
2:40-3:35 Session III (Moderator: Janice McCullagh, Baylor University)
“Displacement: Thomas Wolfe and Aline Bernstein’s New York”
Amélie Moisy, Université Paris Est Créteil
“Lights, Shapes, and Tones of Things”: Wolfe’s Visual Mapping of Cambridge and New York City”
Stephen Simmerman, University of Mount Olive
Break (3:35-3:50)
3:50-4:45 Session IV (Moderator: Mark Canada, Indiana University Kokomo)
“Thomas Wolfe: A Remnant in Modern Asheville”
Leonard Porter, Asheville, North Carolina
“You Can’t Go Home Again: Journalism, Modern Writing, and Cliché”
Jim MacKenzie and Sarah Giavedoni, Asheville, North Carolina
5:00—7:00 Dinner on Your Own
Friday Evening–June 1, 2018
“‘The Awful Responsibility of Time’:
Re-reading and Writing Under the Weight of History”
Wiley Cash, Writer-in-Residence, University of North Carolina Asheville
The Levine Museum of the New South
Presentation at 7:30; Museum Doors Open at 6:00 for Attendees; Cash Bar in Lobby
(Co-Sponsored by American Studies, UNC Charlotte)
Saturday, June 2, 2018
8:00-8:30 Continental Breakfast (Outside the Mint Ballroom)
8:30-9:25 Session V ( Moderator: George Hovis, State University of New York Oneonta)
“‘The Web of Futility’: Künstlerroman and the Hunger for Meaning”
Paige Welch, State University of New York Oneonta
“Landscape, Travel, and Trains in Thomas Wolfe’s Search for Home”
Alana Dagenhart, Johnson & Wales University, Charlotte
9:30-10:05 Session VI ( Moderator: David Radavich, Eastern Illinois University)
“The Death of Gant: Thomas Wolfe’s Topos of an Individual Suffering from Prostate Cancer”
Ralf Bickeböller, Urologie an der Paulskirche, Frankfurt-am-Main
Nikolaos Tselis, Universitätsklinikum, Frankfurt Klinik für Strahlentherapie
10:10-10:40 Business Meeting
President Rebecca Godwin presiding
Break (10:40-10:55)
10:55-12:15 Session V (Moderator: Ray Walker, Decatur, Georgia)
“Thomas Wolfe and the Great War”
Joseph M. Flora, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
“Those Once Happy Horses of Berlin”
James W. Clark, Jr., North Carolina State University
“Dark in the Forest: Thomas Wolfe’s 1930 Political Awakening in Freiburg, Germany”
Steven B. Rogers, Historian/Research Consultant, Washington, D.C.
12:15-12:30 Final Words: Rebecca Godwin, President
Epilogue: Jan Hensley, Greensboro, North Carolina
Lunch on Your Own / Enjoy Charlotte
6:00-7:00 Cash Bar (Outside the Mint Ballroom)
7:00 Banquet (The Mint Ballroom)
Awards Ceremony: President Rebecca Godwin
Banquet Address: Shelby Stephenson, North Carolina Poet Laureate, 2014-16
You may register for the conference by mail or electronically. Hotel and parking information is available on the main conference webpage.
