Academic Conferences

UPCOMING PANELS

There will be two Atwood panels at the 2014 Modern Language Association Convention
Chicago, January 2014

Margaret Atwood’s Latest Work: A Roundtable Discussion
The final book in the MaddAddam trilogy is set to be released in September. This will be a roundtable discussion of the final book. Abstracts suggesting approach you anticipate taking is due by 15 March 2013. Submit to Theodore Sheckels (tsheckel@rmc.edu) or Karma Waltonen (kjwaltonen@ucdavis.edu).

Electronic Atwood
This panel will focus on Atwood’s creative use of electronic media. Send a 250-word abstract by 8 March 2013 to Theodore F. Sheckels (tsheckel@rmc.edu).

PREVIOUS PANELS

There were two Atwood panels at the 2013 Modern Language Association Convention
Boston, January, 2013

1. Margaret Atwood: Religion, Ethics, and Debt

Program arranged by the Margaret Atwood Society.

2. In Other Worlds: Atwood and Lessing’s Speculative Fiction

Program arranged as a collaboration between the Doris Lessing Society and the Margaret Atwood Society.

Modern Language Association Convention
January 2012

Margaret Atwood and the Apocalypse

Program arranged by the Margaret Atwood Society

Presiding: Tomoko Kuribayashi

• Karma Waltonen (UC Davis): “‘it was zero hour, you said Be Brave’: Tracing Atwood’s Apocalypses”
• Lauren Rule Maxwell (Citadel):  ”‘Apocalypse coiled in my tongue’: Apocalyptic Vision in Margaret Atwood’s Poetry”
• Kathryn VanSpanckeren (U of Tampa): “Atwood’s ‘Last Man’ Novels: Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood”
• Debrah Raschke:  (Missouri State U): “‘The Post-Modern Condition’ as Apocalypse in Atwood’s Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood”

ACCUTE Conference 2011

University of New Brunswick and St. Thomas University, May 28-May 31

Organizer/Chair: Karen MacFarlane (Mount St Vincent University)

ACCUTE Joint Session with the Margaret Atwood Society

Margaret Atwood and the Body

• Jess Huber (Memorial): “’Having a Body is Not Altogether Serious’: Limitless Corporeality in Margaret Atwood’s Short Fiction.
• Lynda Hall (Calgary): “Margaret Atwood’s model prisoner: Embodied Performances of Oryx and Grace Evoke ‘pure bliss, pure terror.’”
• Helene Staveley (Memorial) “Margaret Atwood’s Blind Assassin and Alias Grace: Power and the Writing Body.”

Modern Language Association Convention
January 2011

Ecocritical Perspectives on Margaret Atwood’s Recent Fiction

8 January 2010, 10:15–11:30 a.m., Platinum Salon B, J. W. Marriott

Program arranged by the Margaret Atwood Society

Presiding: Tomoko Kuribayashi

• Lauren J. Lacey,“Oryx and Crake as Ecofeminist Fiction”
• Lynda Hall, “‘O Honey. You’re My Only Hope. Don’t Let Me Down’: Oryx and Nature in Jimmy’s Extinctathon Game of Life”
• Amanda Thibodeau,“Feminist Political Ecology and Reading The Year of the Flood”
• Danette DiMarco, “‘The Echoing Green’: Blakean Form in Margaret Atwood’s The Year of the Flood”

Narrating Past, Present, and Future: Doris Lessing and Margaret Atwood

10:15–11:30 a.m., Platinum Salon I, J. W. Marriott

Program arranged by the Doris Lessing Society and the Margaret Atwood Society

Presiding: Tonya M. Krouse

• Earl G. Ingersoll, “Engendering Utopia and Dystopia: Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and Oryx and Crake, Lessing’s The Marriages between Zones Three, Four, and Five”
• Lynda A. Hall, “The Puppets Jerk to Their Invisible Strings: Performances of Oryx and Emily in Memoirs of a Survivor and Oryx and Crake”
• Virginia Tiger, “Fables for Tomorrow from Today in the Speculative Fables of Doris Lessing and Margaret Atwood”

Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture since 1900
February 2010

Margaret Atwood Society Panel

Chairs: Susanna Hoeness-Krupsaw and Drew Shannon Patrick

• Hannele Kivinen, “Looking forward by Moving Backwards: Revisionary Psychoanalysis in Selected Poems by Margaret Atwood”
• Dibakar Pal, “Of Pride and Vanity”
• Debrah Raschke, ”Canadian Landscape Painting and Atwood’s  ‘Death by Landscape’”
• Françoise Couturier-Storey and Jeff Storey “Spirituality, Voice, and the ‘Language of the Marshes’ in Margaret Atwood’s World of Fiction”

Modern Language Association Convention
December 2009

Margaret Atwood’s Most Recent Work

Politics and Economics in Works by Margaret Atwood

Chair: Tomoko Kuribayashi

• Theodore F. Sheckels, “The Difficult Quest for Integrative Power in Atwood’s Fiction”
• Earl G. Ingersoll, “Hard Times in the Chase Family: Politics and Economics in Atwood’s The Blind Assassin“
• Fiona Tolan,  ”‘Alone on a wide, wide sea’: Atwood’s Liberal Vision in Oryx and Crake“
• Sarah Appleton, “Corp(Se)ocracy: The Body as Commodity in Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood“

Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture since 1900
February 2009

Margaret Atwood Society Panel
Chair: Tomoko Kuribayashi

• Carol Osborne, ”Saving Graces: Narrative Designs in Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake“
• Nancy Peled, “Wicked Woman Writing: Narrator as Witch in Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin“

Modern Language Association Convention
December 2008

The Door and Other Atwoodian Spaces
Organizers: Deborah Rosenthal and Tomoko Kuribayashi

• Ted Sheckels, “Spaces of Retreat: Temporary Respites in Atwood’s Threatening World”
• Earl Ingersoll, “Doors and Other Spaces in Atwood”
• Lynda Hall, “‘Born with mortality’s hook in us’: Atwood’s The Door on the Thresholds of Life”
• Paul Huebener, “Dark Stories: Poet-Audience Relations and the Journey Underground in The Door”

Modern Myths and Popular Culture in Atwood’s Works
Organizers: Karma Waltonen and Denise Du Vernay

• Jenni G. Halpin, “Distressed Distribution in ‘Encounters with the Element Man’”
• Lorraine York, “’I’ve Broken the Sound Barrier’: Margaret Atwood’s Literary Celebrity and Popular Culture”
• Sharon R. Wilson, “Magical Realism in Atwood’s The Blind Assassin”
• Eric Aronoff, “’We’re Hard-Wired for Dreams’: Mythology, Biology, and the Human in Atwood’s Oryx and Crake”

Modern Language Association Convention
December 2007

Atwood’s Recent Shorter Fiction
Organizers:  Sharon Wilson and Lisa Weckerle

Presiding: Lisa Weckerle

• Kiley Kapuscinski, “Writing the Wrong: Ethical Responses to Female Violence in the Mythic Minifiction of Margaret Atwood”
• Camille Harris, “‘Who Are We Now?’: Societal Constructions in Margaret Atwood’s The Tent”
• Karma Waltonen, “‘Your Tent Is Made of Paper’: Self-Reflexive Writing in The Tent”
• Alice Rachel Ridout, “The Relation between Time and Space in Margaret Atwood’s Moral Disorder”

Atwood as a Poet
Organizers: Karma Waltonen and Debby Rosenthal

• Marilyn J. Rose, “Tender (Though Far from Toothless): Margaret Atwood on Love”
• Tomoko Kuribayashi, “‘Consider the Body’: Remaking the Myth of Female Sexuality in Margaret Atwood’s Recent Poems”
• H. Louise Davis, “Atwood, Ambiguous, and Accusatory: Circe/Mud Poems and ‘The Bog Man’ as Models for Ecofeminist Fiction”

Modern Language Association Convention
December 2006

Myth and Intertextuality in the Works of Margaret Atwood

Presiding: Deborah Rosenthal and Lisa Weckerle

• Sharon R. Wilson, “The Crone Creator Goddess in Atwood’s The Penelopiad“
• Earl G. Ingersoll, “Myth in Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad“
• Hilde Staels, “The Penelopiad: Atwood’s Parodic and Burlesque Transformation of the Penelope Myth”
• Lauren J. Lacey, “Unmaking Myth in The Penelopiad“
• Tomoko Kuribayashi, “Margaret Atwood’s Myth Remaking in Recent Poems and The Penelopiad“

Performing Atwood

Presiding: Jennifer M. Hoofard and Tomoko Kuribayashi

• Deborah Phelps,  “Misconceiving Atwood: The Edible Woman in Performance”
• Lisa Weckerle, “Multiple Identities: A One-Woman Show of the Writing of Margaret Atwood”
• Gilya Hodos and Eileen Strempel “(In)Habitation: Settings of Margaret Atwood Poems by Women Composers”

Twentieth-Century Literature Conference
February 2006

Margaret Atwood Society Panel
Organizer: Cynthia Kuhn
Presiding: Debrah Raschke

• Elizabeth J. Fleitz, “Troubling Gender:  Rethinking the Disordered Body in Atwood’s The Edible Woman”
• Cathia Jenainati, “Narratives of Aging and Melancholia: Margaret Laurence’s The Stone Angel and Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin”
• Debrah Raschke, “’Shock and Awe’: Machiavellian Politics in Margaret Atwood’s The Robber Bride”

Modern Language Association Convention
December 2005

Teaching Margaret Atwood’s Works
Presiding: Jennifer M. Hoofard

• Shuli Barzilai, “Atwood in the Classroom: Looking Back, Looking Forward”
• Tomoko Kuribayashi, “Teaching Margaret Atwood’s Poems Along with Sylvia Plath’s”
• Marie I. Lovrod, “Teaching Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale in the Context of Transnational Feminisms”
• Lynne Bruckner, “Surfacing in the Ecofeminist Classroom”

Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake
Presiding: Dunja M. Mohr

• Karma Waltonen, “Beyond Didacticism: The Relations between the Personal and the Political in Oryx and Crake”
• Deborah Rosenthal,  “’Here and Not Here’: Fragmentation in the Absence and Presence of Maternal and Romantic Bonding in Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake”
• Alice Rachel Ridout, “Tragic Triangles: Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake and The Blind Assassin”
• Tara Johnson, “Locating Sources of Knowledge and Truth in Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake”

Twentieth-Century Literature Conference
February 2005

Margaret Atwood Society Panel
Organizers: Karen Macfarlane and Cynthia Kuhn
Presiding: Sally A. Jacobsen

• Karma Waltonen, “Transgressing Through Humor in Oryx and Crake.”
• Ian Williams, “Or What: Voicing Irony in Morning in the Burned House.”
• Sue Sorensen, “‘Death by Landscape’: Atwood’s Revision of Wordsworth’s Lucy Poems.
• Sally A. Jacobsen, “Fishy Food, Global Business and Atwood’s Postmodern High Jinks in Oryx and Crake.”

Modern Language Association Convention
December 2004

Margaret Atwood’s Dystopian Visions
Presiding: Joy Arbor

Sharon R. Wilson, “Dr. Frankenstein in Oryx and Crake“

• Debrah Raschke,  “The Temptation to Apocalypse in Atwood’s The Robber Bride“
• Dunja M. Mohr, “‘The Rag Ends of Language’: The Poetic Discourse of Survival in Atwood’s Future Visions”
• Deborah Phelps, “Apocalyptic Canada: The Nationalist Lessons of Susanna Moodie.

Margaret Atwood and the Craft of Narrativity

Presiding: Lynda Hall

• Sally A. Jacobsen, “The Blind Assassin: Negotiating with the Canadian Postmodern.”
• Earl G. Ingersoll, “Margaret Atwood as Narrative Innovator: The Handmaid’s Tale.”
• Theodore F. Sheckels, “Critic as Storyteller: Margaret Atwood’s Use of Narrative in Survival and Second Words.”
• Radmila Nastic, “Narrating Alterity in Margaret Atwood’s Surfacing.”

Twentieth-Century Literature Conference
February 2004

Sleight-of-Hand: Transgressive Strategies in Margaret Atwood’s Fiction
Presiding: Shuli Barzilai

• Sally Jacobsen, “Negotiating with the Dead in The Blind Assassin“
• Susan Hoeness-Krupsaw,  “Snowman goes Windigo: Ironic Reversals in Oryx and Crake“
• Shuli Barzilai, “Gothic Fractures in Lady Oracle“

Modern Language Association Convention
December 2003

Margaret Atwood and the Environment
Presiding: Charlotte Templin and Karen Macfarlane

• Holly Blackford, “The Ecological Movement of the Female Body in Surfacing“
• Susan Fisher,  “‘The Faces of Animals’: Margaret Atwood and the Animal Story”
• Patricia Merivale, “Oryx and Crake: The Unhinging of the Ecological Imagination”

Margaret Atwood’s Multiple Bodies
Presiding: Phyllis Perrakis and Joy Arbor

• Sally Chivers and Nicole Markotic, “Margaret Atwood’s Problem Bodies”
• Jennifer Hoofard, “‘It Is Her Body, Silent / and Fingerless, Writing This Poem’: Margaret Atwood’s “Notes toward a Poem That Can Never Be Written”
• Laura Wright, “National Photographic: Embodying the Animal in Margaret Atwood’s Surfacing“
• Steven Bruhm, “Lepers Leaping, Ladies Dancing: Aesthetics and Kinesthetics in Margaret Atwood”