Past Projects 

Roundtable: The Far North and the Global South

The Society for the Study of Southern Literature

Biennial Conference 

February 17-20, 2022

Atlanta, GA

http://southernlit.org/conference/ 

In recent decades, as the field of southern studies has expanded its geographical scope, “the South” has been thoroughly re-contextualized within circum-Caribbean, transatlantic, and global paradigms which challenge the North/South binary of traditional southern studies. Rather than dividing the U.S. into discrete and monolithic regions, these new approaches have explored how the South consistently exceeds the boundaries once thought to contain it. At the same time, scholars of the Global South have been asking similar questions on a larger scale. In his seminal essay conceptualizing the Global South, Arif Dirlik notes that the “the viability of the North/South distinction” has been called into question, as “the boundaries between the two are crisscrossed by networks of various kinds, relocating some parts of the South in the North, and vice versa” (Dirlik 15). This roundtable seeks to bridge these discourses by bringing the U.S. South and the Global South into conversation with the Far North, a region that remains largely absent from both, despite its increased prominence in contemporary political and environmental crises. We aim to explore the tensions, patterns, similarities, and intersections between spaces often conceptualized as diametrically opposed in order to complicate configurations of region. We are particularly interested in work centering indigenous voices and experiences and/or highlighting the cultural heterogeneity of each region and invite comments on any points of connection between the U.S. South, the Global South, and the Far North, including but not limited to:

●      The effects of climate change

●      Stereotypes and fantasies of region

●      Experiences of colonialism, including post-, neo-, and green-

●      Histories of enslavement / the Plantationocene

●      Resource extraction

●      The tourism industry

●      Hierarchies of race, gender, class, and sexuality

●      Indigenous activism and resistance in northern and southern contexts

●      Connections grounded in art and literature

Faulkner Studies in the UK Colloquium: Faulkner, Transgressive Fiction, Postmodernism

“​​Faulkner in the North” Panel

January 2021

Mats Jansson (University of Gothenburg), Haukur Ingvarsson (University of Iceland), Jenna Grace Sciuto (Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts)

Expanding on the notion outlined in the Faulkner Studies in the UK Colloquium CfP that “Faulkner is no mere regional or even traditionally modernist author who is fixated solely upon his ‘postage stamp of native soil,’” this panel seeks to consider the US Southern writer’s work in the context of the broader North Atlantic. The panelists will investigate these connections from various angles, including Faulkner’s reception in the North and the relationship between his writing and that of Nordic authors. Mats Jansson will trace Faulkner’s reception in Sweden from the introduction of his work in 1932 until the 1950 Nobel Prize announcement. Haukur Ingvarsson will explore how Faulkner's initial introduction to the Icelandic literary system is interlinked with early translations of his work into the Scandinavian languages, but also Hollywood, popular culture, and new technologies. Jenna Grace Sciuto will examine the transgressive depictions of whiteness, antiblackness, and colonial histories in Faulkner’s work, alongside that of Icelandic writer Guðbergur Bergsson. The panelists intend for this conversation to serve as a foundation for a future Nordic Faulkner Studies network.

Mats Jansson

University of Gothenburg

In the traces of modernism: William Faulkner in Swedish criticism 1932–1950

This presentation focusses the reception of William Faulkner in Sweden from the first introduction in 1932 until the Nobel Prize announcement in 1950. Through reviews, introductory articles, book chapters, forewords, and translations, the critical evaluation of Faulkner’s particular brand of modernism is traced. The presentation takes the form of a piece of reception history where continuous acts of ‘criticism’ – selecting, judging, evaluating – constitute the common denominator. I will focus on the reader in history having Faulkner’s oeuvre at the centre of attention. The historical reception of Faulkner’s work furthermore points to a general change within the literary institution that reflects the gradual institutionalization of modernism at large. The presentation takes theoretical support from Hans Robert Jauss’ notion of ‘horizon of expectations’, Gérard Genette’s concept of ‘paratext’, and E.D. Hirsh’s distinction between ‘meaning’ and ‘significance’. To pinpoint the biographical and psychologizing tendency in Swedish criticism, Roland Barthes’s notion of ‘biographeme’ is introduced. The presentation furthermore shows that the critical discussion of Faulkner’s modernism could be ordered along an axis where the basic parameters are form and content, aesthetics and ideology, narrator and author, and writer and reader. The problematics adhering to these fundamental aspects are more or less relevant for the modernist novel in general. Thus, it could be argued that the reception of Faulkner in Sweden and Swedish Faulkner criticism epitomize and highlight the fundamental features pertaining to the notion of ‘modernism’, both with regard to its formal and content-based characteristics.

Haukur Ingvarsson

University of Iceland

Faulkner 66° NORTH 1934–1944

In 1939 Icelandic author Guðmundur Daníelsson described his enthusiasm for contemporary American literature in an interview with a local newspaper. Daníelsson only names one American author, William Faulkner, and proclaims that he is “undoubtedly one of the greatest writers in the World today”. Daníelsson was living in a small and remote fishing town on the Westfjords of Iceland at the time and his boastful claims about the merits of his American colleague raises eyebrows – especially when it is taken into consideration that Faulkner was not translated into Icelandic until 1948. Where did Daníelsson come across the works of Faulkner, and did they leave an impression on him in any way?

This lecture will explore William Faulkner’s reputation in Iceland from his initial introduction to the Icelandic literary system in 1934 until Danielson’s third and final novel in the trilogy From Dust Thou Art (Af jörðu ertu kominn 1941–1944) was published in 1944. The trilogy is discussed in the context of recent scholarly studies of why Faulkner’s works have particularly appealed to authors from regions that were struggling economically and culturally, either within their home countries or in the face of a foreign power. That Faulkner’s work reached Icelandic readers this early also sheds light on the function and relevance of foreign language literature in the Icelandic literary system in the 1930s and the early 1940s. This function has been largely overlooked in research on Icelandic literary history.