The 13th International F. Scott Fitzgerald Society Conference, July 4-11th, 2015, “Gaelicly yours, Scott Fitzgerald”
Gaelicly yours, Scott Fitzgerald The 13th International F. Scott Fitzgerald Society Conference: July 4-11th, 2015 in Dublin and Waterford, Ireland
From Hemingway’s description of his friend’s “very fair wavy hair, a high forehead, excited and friendly eyes and a delicate long-lipped Irish mouth” in A Moveable Feast to his signature in The Crack-Up, “Gaelicly yours, Scott Fitzgerald” [sic], the literary world of F. Scott Fitzgerald is suffused with a Nostalgic Ireland. From the Irish Melodies to Dick’s “Irish face” in Tender is the Night; the Irish girls, Tammany politics, and the Irish problem, and Anthony and Geraldine’s conversation over Chevalier in The Beautiful and Damned; Pat Brady or Katherine Moore in The Last Tycoon; to Monsignor Darcy and Beatrice Blaine in This Side of Paradise, Fitzgerald’s novels, short stories, and essays are populated with the remnants of an elusive Ireland. With that in mind, we invite you to visit one of the places that marks a clear yet underexplored legacy on Fitzgerald’s creativity and personality.
While we will happily entertain proposals on all aspects of Fitzgerald’s life and work, due to the location, we particularly encourage papers that focus on the Irish influences on or aspects of his writing and career. Those wide-ranging topics might focus on the named Irish elements or characters from stories like “Benediction” to “Babylon Revisited”, or interrogate his treatment of traditional Irish and Irish-American tropes (i.e., Religious Ritual and Moral Authority, Catholicism, Alcoholism, Social Mobility and Discrimination, Cultural Heritage, Irish Politics) in short and full-length fiction. Other possible topics might focus on the legacy, influence, and interaction between Fitzgerald and Irish authors such as James Joyce (who both occupy an interesting connection as Modernist expatriates in Paris), Shane Leslie, or Lennox Robinson (who he worked with while drafting The Romantic Egotist and The Beautiful and Damned, respectively); or Fitzgerald’s influence on Irish and Irish-American authors (such as Ross MacDonald, John O’Hara, or Raymond Chandler). We are also hoping to receive proposals that might explore connections between Zelda and Lucia Joyce (both were patients at the Zürich Burghölzli hospital at virtually the same time).
Conference events will begin with two days in Dublin before moving to our host university, Waterford Institute of Technology. Waterford, located in Munster province, is Ireland’s oldest and 5th most populous locale at nearly 47,000 residents, and is the main city of the South-Eastern Region. Although not a huge city, Waterford has a number of intellectual and cultural venues, such as the three Museums of the Viking Triangle, including Reginald’s Tower (the oldest urban civic building in Ireland); Christchurch Cathedral; Greyfriars Municipal Art Gallery; the historic Catholic seminary, St. John’s College, the Theatre Royal and Garter Lane Arts Centre; and, most famously, Waterford Crystal. Conference participants will also have the opportunity to visit the nearby John F. Kennedy Trust at the Irish America Hall of Fame, and the Irish Emigration Experience at the Dunbrody Famine Ship museum.
The conference director will be Prof. Dustin Anderson of Georgia Southern University (danderson@georgiasouthern.edu), with co-program chairs Prof. William Blazek (blazekw@hope.ac.uk) and Philip McGowan (philip.mcgowan@qub.ac.uk).
Please send your 250‐500 word proposal (noting any audio/visual requests) along with a brief C.V. and biographical statement to our official conference email, fsfinireland@gmail.com. The deadline for proposals is October 1, 2014. Presenters will be notified of acceptance by November 1, 2014.