Eudora Welty
Speakers Bureau
The Eudora Welty Society is pleased to announce the Eudora Welty Centenary Speakers Bureau for 2009. The Speakers Bureau proposes the following scholars, many of the major voices in Welty Studies, as potential lectures and teachers to come to your institution during 2009, to observe the 100th anniversary of Eudora Welty’s birth and to celebrate her place in American fiction. The speakers’ topics include a wide range of subjects from critical and theoretical issues in Welty’s work to textual and bibliographical studies to her photography; from her autobiographical writing to her biographies. Many of the speakers have addressed audiences at academic conferences, library symposia, book clubs, museums, schools, and universities.
The speakers have agreed to lecture during the 2009 Eudora Welty Centenary year on behalf of the Eudora Welty Society and the Eudora Welty Foundation. Host institutions pay an honorarium in addition to the speaker’s travel and lodging expenses. We hope that these scholars will donate a portion of their honorarium to the Eudora Welty Foundation to further the work of Welty Studies.
Interested scholars are invited to send a brief bio (100 words or less) and up to three titles, plus contact information to the Mississippi Quarterly at nep27@msstate.edu or missq@missq.msstate.edu. Institutions will contact scholars directly for arrangements.
Nancy Lippincott Ashley
“Eudora Welty: Small Towns, Families, and One Writer’s Stories of the Deep South”
For the past 8 years Ashley has been promoting Eudora Welty in the Dallas/Ft.Worth area and in other Texas towns through book clubs and cultural organizations, which are less formal than academic settings, but the material is accurate and entertaining. Her stories, her life, and her great humor wear well with men and women in these audiences. One lady in a couples book club said, “My husband went out and bought every book he could find by Eudora Welty and has had the best time reading!”
Nancy Lippincott Ashley holds a B.A. from Mississippi State College for Women, an M.A.T. from Vanderbilt, and is now a self-certified cultural ambassador for Mississippi in Texas. Member, Eudora Welty Foundation Board. Dallas, Texas. nashley1@sbcglobal.net
Suzan King
“Meet Eudora Welty"
A first person portrayal of Eudora Welty enables audiences to experience a unique and personal visit with the author. The presentation will include a first-person monologue followed by a Q&A in which audience members may ask questions of Welty. Finally King will field questions based on her study of Welty.
Suzan King (MA English) is a humanities scholar who has performed at libraries, museums, and schools across the country, most recently for the Seattle Public Library's Living History Series, where she has appeared as Harriet Beecher Stowe, Eleanor Roosevelt and Dorothy Parker. suzan.king@yahoo.com
Pearl McHaney
“Hoodoo and the Black Vernacular in Eudora Welty’s “Livvie”
“Livvie” as a twentieth century voodoo/hoodoo version of Chaucer’s “Merchant’s Tale” refigured with Solomon as January and Livvie as the lovely May.
“Transient Moments and Imaginative Acts: Eudora Welty as Photographer”
Welty as photographer from her father’s early lessons to her New York City exhibitions, efforts to be employed as a photographer to success in publishing her “snapshots.”
“One Writer’s Beginnings or How Eudora Welty Learned to Write like Eudora Welty”
Discussion of Welty’s autobiography and of her early writing of college humor pieces, radio station newsletters, society columns, and uncollected stories in which her inimitable style was already evident.
Pearl McHaney is Associate Professor of English at Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA. Presentations at academic conferences, universities, libraries, and book clubs. pmchaney@gsu.edu or Pearl McHaney
Harriet Pollack
"Welty's Photography: In Black and White"
"Ladies, Flashers, and The Daring Escape of Female Sheltering: Changing Patterns in Welty's Girl Stories"
"Did The Writer Crusade? Welty and Racism"
Harriet Pollack is Professor of English at Bucknell University. Recipient of the 2008 Phoenix Award for her contributions to Welty studies, Pollack co-edited (with Suzanne Marrs) Welty and Politics: Did The Writer Crusade? Her work also focuses on Welty's modernism, on her uses of allusion, detail, plot, and genre, on her girl stories, on issues of class and race, and on the relationship between Welty's photography and fiction. She received the 1998 Kirby Prize for her essay connecting photographic convention to Welty's story compositions, and discussed the photography on the occasion of Welty's first European exhibition and during Passionate Observer: Eudora Welty Among Artists of the Thirties at the Mississippi Museum of Art. Recently she co-edited Emmett Till in Literary Memory and Imagination, and her next book is The Body of the Other Woman in the Fiction and Photography of Eudora Welty. pollack@bucknell.edu
Sally Wolff-King
“The Eudora Welty I Knew”
Discussion of my personal relationship with the famous author. Description of Welty's colorful and dynamic personality and how she developed her craft of fiction.
“Eudora Welty--Reading and Beyond”
How to approach reading Eudora Welty's complex stories and novels, and how to progress to a deep understanding of Welty's impressive fiction.
“Eudora Welty in Her Place”
The quintessentially southern sense of place as it appears in Eudora Welty's work, how place pertains to Welty personally, and how the author explores an old theme in complex and compelling ways.
Sally Wolff King is Adjunct Professor and Associate Dean, Office for Undergraduate Education, at Emory College, Emory University, Atlanta, GA 30322. Phone: 404-727-0674; Fax: 404-712-9060; swolff@emory.edu ; Sally Wolff King
