The Society invites proposals for papers to be presented at the annual meeting in St. Louis. Clearly organized proposals of about 300 words, on any topic reasonably related to Eliot, along with biographical sketches, should be forwarded to the President, Michael Coyle, by June 15, 2013.

Papers given by graduate students and scholars receiving their doctoral degrees no more than two years before the date of the meeting will be considered for the Fathman Young Scholar Award. Those eligible for this award should mention the fact in their submission. The Fathman Award, which includes a monetary prize, will be announced at the final session of the meeting.

Eliot Society members who would like to chair a panel are invited to apprise the President of their interest, either with or independently of a paper proposal.

Call for Peer Seminar Participants: "Eliot and Asia"
T. S. Eliot Society Annual Meeting
St. Louis, Missouri, Sept. 27-29, 2013

Recent debates about globalization and transnationalism in literary studies have raised interest in how the Asian "Orient" inspired modernist innovations in "Occidental" societies. This seminar invites papers that explore how transpacific intercultural dialogue figures in Eliot's poetry or may have shaped the guiding principles of his modernism. Which texts, individuals, or life experiences fostered Eliot's interest in Asia, and how did his study of these traditions, in turn, catalyze his development as a poet and critic? How does he regard the role of translation in this context? Where is there clearest evidence of Eliot's response to the literatures, religions, and arts of Asia, and how does this response compare with that of Pound, Williams, Moore, Stein, Stevens, or other authors? Does Eliot's collocation of Asian and non-Asian perspectives in his poetry mark a significant departure from hegemonic "Orientalism," in Said's sense? These questions are meant only to be suggestive, and participants are more than welcome to adopt other approaches to the general topic.

The seminar will be led by Anita Patterson, Professor of English at Boston University, where she teaches courses on American literature, modernism, and black literatures of the Americas. She is author, most recently, of Race, American Literature and Transnational Modernisms (Cambridge UP, 2008), and is co-editor of the book review section for Twentieth-Century Literature. She is currently working on a book about Japonisme and the emergence of American modernism, drawing on works by Eliot, Pound, Fenollosa, Okakura, La Farge, Noguchi, and others.

The seminar is open to the first 15 registrants; registration will close July 1st. Seminarians will submit 4-5 page position papers by email, no later than September 1st. To sign up, or for answers to questions, please write Frances Dickey.

2013 Memorial Lecturer: Jahan Ramazani

The Eliot Society is pleased to announce that Jahan Ramazani will join us as this year's T. S. Eliot Memorial Lecturer.

Jahan Ramazani is Edgar F. Shannon Professor of English at the University of Virginia. His 2013 Eliot Society lecture on “T. S. Eliot, Poetry, and Prayer” will draw from his forthcoming book, Poetry and Its Others: News, Prayer, Song, and the Dialogue of Genres. Ramazani has authored many notable books including, most recently, A Transnational Poetics (2009), winner of the 2011 Harry Levin Prize of the American Comparative Literature Association, awarded for the best book in comparative literary history published in the years 2008 to 2010. The citation for this prize called Ramazani's book “breathtaking in its global scope and critical incisiveness,” noting that “the spectrum of issues and poets treated in this book is nothing short of stunning.” Previous books include The Hybrid Muse: Postcolonial Poetry in English (2001); Poetry of Mourning: The Modern Elegy from Hardy to Heaney (1994), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; and Yeats and the Poetry of Death: Elegy, Self-Elegy, and the Sublime (1990). He edited the most recent edition of the Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry (2003) and, with Jon Stallworthy, The Twentieth Century and After in the Norton Anthology of English Literature (2006, 2012). He is also an associate editor of the new Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics (2012).

Ramazani grew up in a family where he often heard Persian poetry recited. After he graduated from the University of Virginia in 1981, a Rhodes scholarship took him to Oxford, where he studied modern literature with Richard Ellmann. Ramazani wrote his dissertation on Yeats at Yale University before joining the University of Virginia’s faculty. He has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, an NEH Fellowship, the William Riley Parker Prize of the MLA, and the Thomas Jefferson Award, the University of Virginia’s highest honor.