Papers Presented

American Literature Association Annual Conference, May 2023

“New Interests in the Life and Work of Katherine Anne Porter,” Jerry Findley, Chair, Boston, MA, May 27, 2023

Beth Alvarez, University of Maryland, “‘Between the truth and well-regulated fiction’: Katherine Anne Porter and George Platt Lynes in Letters and Photographs.”
Amber Marie Kohl, University of Maryland, “Modernist Women in Paris: Exploring the Archives of Katherine Anne Porter and Djuna Barnes.”
Geneva M. Gano, Texas State University, “Mexican Romance: Katherine Anne Porter and los Contemporaneos.”

American Literature Association Annual Conference, May 2022

“Katherine Anne Porter: Out of the Archives,” Beth Alvarez, Chair, Chicago, IL, May 26, 2022

Alice Cheylan, Université de Toulon, France, “The Correspondence between Katherine Anne Porter and Janice Biala.”
Jerry Findley, Independent Scholar, “‘Pale Horse, Pale Rider’: Humanity, Truth, and Immortality. ”
Lydia Nixon, Indiana University, “‘The Ship of This World on Its Voyage to Eternity’: Allegories of Ecological Apocalypse in Katherine Anne Porter’s Ship of Fools.”
Amber Kohl, University of Maryland, respondent.

American Literature Association Annual Conference, May 2019

“Katherine Anne Porter’s Worlds,” Darlene Unrue, Chair, Boston, MA, May 24, 2019

Alice Cheylan, Université de Toulon, “The Objectivity of Landscapes in Katherine Anne Porter’s Early Work.”
Christine Grogan, University of Delaware, “Visions and Revisions in Katherine Anne Porter’s ‘The Jilting of Granny Weatherall.'”
Caroline Straty Kraft, University of Texas at Austin, “Katherine Anne Porter: The Unseen Intellectual.”

American Literature Association Annual Conference, May 2018

“Katherine Anne Porter: A Woman of Letters,” Christine Grogan, Chair, San Francisco, CA, May 26, 2018

Amber Kohl and Beth Alvarez, University of Maryland, “’All my past is usable’: Online Access and the Katherine Anne Porter Correspondence Project at the University of Maryland.”
Alice Cheylan, Université de Toulon, “Katherine Anne Porter’s Special Bond.”
Jerry Findley, Independent Scholar, “Millennialism: The Past Is the Present.”

Society for the Study of American Women Writers, “Border Crossings: Translation, Migration, & Gender in the Americas, the Transatlantic & the Transpacific,” July 2018

“Katherine Anne Porter’s Familiar Countries,” Beth Alvarez, Chair, Bordeaux, France, July 7, 2018

Darlene Unrue, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, “Unraveling Katherine Anne Porter’s French Murder Mystery: New Clues to Her Life and Art.”
Jerry Findley, Independent Scholar, “Millennial Change: Katherine Anne Porter’s Political Understanding of the Long War: (1914-1945).”
Joseph Kuhn, Adam Mickiewicz University, “Katherine Anne Porter and Hannah Arendt: Thinking Guilt and Responsibility after the Second World War.”

American Literature Association Annual Conference, May 2017

“Katherine Anne Porter and Kay Boyle: In the World and on the Page,” Christine Hait, Chair, Boston, MA, May 27, 2017

Alice Cheylan, Université de Toulon, “Katherine Anne Porter’s French Experience.”
Krista Quesenberry, Pennsylvania State University, “Being Authors Together: Kay Boyle as Memoirist, Activist, Modernist.”
Christine Grogan, Pennsylvania State University, “In transition: Katherine Anne Porter and Kay Boyle.”
Anne Reynes-Delobel, Aix-Marseille Université, “Places, Faces, and Words: Kay Boyle in/and the South of France.”

American Literature Association Annual Conference, May 2016

“Katherine Anne Porter–Texas, Southern, Cosmopolitian,” Jerry Findley, Chair, San Francisco, CA, May 28, 2016

Linda Kornasky, Angelou State University, “‘All this Dust and Welter’ of Texas: Dorothy Scarborough’s The Wind and Katherine Anne Porter’s Noon Wine.”
Elizabeth DePriest, University of Maryland, “The Patriarchal Family in Katherine Anne Porter’s Reproductive Modernism.”
Joseph Kuhn, Adam Mickiewicz University, “A ‘Slowly Darkening Decade’: The 1930s in the Political Imagination of Katherine Anne Porter.”

American Literature Association Annual Conference, May 2016

“Katherine Anne Porter and the Influence of Internationalism and Universalism,” Jerry Findley, Chair, San Francisco, CA, May 28, 2016

Beth Alvarez, University of Maryland, “Mexican Artist Adolfo Best-Maugard’s Influence on the Art and the Aesthetics of Katherine Anne Porter.”
Darlene Unrue, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, “Hegelian Discourse in Katherine Anne Porter’s World War Fiction.”
Jeffrey Lawrence, Rutgers University, “Why She Wrote about Mexico: Katherine Anne Porter and the Literature of Experience.”

American Literature Association Annual Conference, May 2015

“Katherine Anne Porter in Her Time,” Darlene Unrue, Chair, Boston, MA, May 23, 2015

Laurel Bollinger, University of Alabama in Huntsville, “Plague and Revelation in Katherine Anne Porter’s ‘Pale Horse, Pale Rider.'”
Melanie Benson Taylor, Dartmouth College, “A Beautiful Nothing: The Splendud Failures in Porter’s ‘Theft.'”
Ted Wojtasik, St. Andrews University, “Text and Subtext of Dream Imagery in Katherine Anne Porter’s Fiction.”

American Literature Association Annual Conference, May 2014

“Katherine Anne Porter Open Topic,” Beth Alvarez, Chair, Washington, D.C., May 24, 2014

Elizabeth DePriest, University of Maryland, “Maternal and Creative Anxieties in Katherine Anne Porter’s ‘Rope.'”
Linda Kornasky, Angelo State University, “‘Noon Wine’ and American Literary Naturalism by Women Writers.”
Christine Hait, Columbia College, SC, “Competitive Mythmaking: Katherine Anne Porter and Ernest Hemingway in a Paris Bookshop.”

American Literature Association Annual Conference, May 2014

“Katherine Anne Porter Open Topic,” Beth Alvarez, Chair, Washington, D.C., May 24, 2014

Karuna Bandi, Acharya Nagarjuna University, Guntur, India, “The Speculative World of Mrs. Whipple: A Re-reading of ‘He’ in the Light of Conceptual Metaphor Theory.”
Kerry Hasler-Brooks, University of Delaware, “‘She did not know what it was’: Katherine Anne Porter, Mexico, and Century Magazine.”
Tabitha A. Morgan, Community College of Philadelphia, “‘Inherited Images’: Decolonizing a Transcultural Aesthetic in Katherine Anne Porter’s Outline of Mexican Popular Arts and Crafts and Anita Brenner’s Idols Behind Altars.”

American Literature Association Annual Conference, May 2013

“Reading and Teaching Katherine Anne Porter,” Christine Grogan, Chair, Boston, MA, May 24, 2013

Heather Fox, Virginia Commonwealth University, “Rereading Katherine Anne Porter’s ‘The Old Order’ as a Reconstructive Process of Memory.”
Raelene Bradley, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, “‘The Spivvelton Mystery’: From Vengeance to Art.”
Pat Bradley, Middle Tennessee State University, “‘Old Mortality,’ ‘Noon Wine,’ and Robert Penn Warren’s ‘Pyre of Youth.'”

American Literature Association Annual Conference, May 2012

“Ship of Fools 50th Anniversary: A Panel Discussion,” Jerry Findley, moderator, San Francisco, CA, May 25, 2012

Thomas Austenfeld, University of Fribourg
Beth Alvarez, University of Maryland
Alexandra Subramanian, President of the Katherine Anne Porter Society
Darlene Unrue, University of Nevada at Las Vegas

Narrenschiff/Ship of Fools: A Transatlantic Encounter, University of Fribourg, Switzerland, May 11-12, 2012

Guido Vergauwen, Rector, University of Fribourg, Opening Remarks.
Thomas Austenfeld, University of Fribourg, “Transatlantic Literary Journeys.”
Dimiter Daphinoff, University of Fribourg, “‘After all, what is life itself?’ On death and immortality in Erasmus’ The Praise of Folly and Thomas More’s Utopia.”
Jewell Spears Brooker, Eckerd College, “Fools and Folly in Erasmus and Porter.”
Joachim Knape, University of Tuebingen, “Was heisst Narrenschiff? Brandt und im Vergleich.”
Hans Ruef, University of Fribourg, “Das Widerspruechliche im Narren bei Brandt und Porter.”
Alexandra Subramanian, Independent Scholar, “Ship of Fools: A Severe Blow to Faith.”
Christine Hait, Columbia College, “Ship of Fools the Film: In Context.”
Robert Brinkmeyer, University of South Carolina, “Lofty Ideals, Troubled Lives: Porter’s Ship of Fools and Faulkner’s ‘Go Down, Moses.'”
Beth Alvarez, University of Maryland, “‘before the voyage ended’: An Examination of the Serial Publication of Ship of Fools, 1944-1959.”
Darlene Unrue, University of Nevada at Las Vegas, “Katherine Anne Porter’s Ship of Fools: Failed Novel, Classic Satire, or Private Joke?”

American Literature Association Annual Conference, May 2011

Round Table Discussion on “Katherine Anne Porter and Kay Boyle: Connections,” Christine Hait, Moderator, Boston, MA, May 28, 2011

Christine Hait, Columbia College, “Introduction.”
Beth Alvarez, University of Maryland, “‘A Desert Cactus’: The Literary Friendship of Katherine Anne Porter and Kay Boyle.”
Thomas Austenfeld, University of Fribourg, “Recollection and Revolution: Katherine Anne Porter and Kay Boyle as Poets.”

American Literature Association Annual Conference, May 2010

Round Table Discussion on “‘The Downward Path’: Depictions of Childhood in Katherine Anne Porter’s Fiction,” Alexandra Subramanian, Moderator, San Francisco, CA, May 28, 2010

Darlene Harbour Unrue, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, “The Evolution of Katherine Anne Porter’s Child Characters.”
Christine L. Grogan, University of South Florida,”How Brother Killed the Pregnant Rabbit.”
Beth Alvarez, University of Maryland, “Adolescents in the Fiction and Nonfiction of Katherine Anne Porter.”
Alexandra Subramanian, Independent Scholar, “The Children of the Vera.”

American Literature Association Annual Conference, May 2009

“Katherine Anne Porter: The Transformation of Autobiography into Art,” Darlene Unrue, Chair, Boston, MA, May 23, 2009

Christine L. Grogan, University of South Florida, “‘. . . but she was too free’: Aunt Amy’s Mysterious Hemorrhage in ‘Old Mortality.'”
Wayne McDonald, University of Akron, “Out of Place, Out of Time: The Lusk Committee in ‘Pale Horse, Pale Rider.'”
Laura Furman, University of Texas at Austin, and Lynn Miller, Director, WriteSpace International, “Katherine Anne Porter as ‘Passenger on the Ship of Fools’: A Play.”

American Literature Association Annual Conference, May 2008

“Innocence and Experience in the Stories of Katherine Anne Porter,” Jerry Findley, Chair, San Francisco, CA, May 23, 2008

Beth Alvarez, University of Maryland, “‘fools of life, . . . fugitives from death’ in Katherine Anne Porter’s ‘Holiday.'”
Kellie Warren, Tulane University, “The Ethnographic Participant-Observer as Narrator: Ethics and Memory in Katherine Anne Porter.”
Alexandra Subramanian, Independent Scholar, “‘Magic’: Porter Breaks the Spell of Her Publishing Commitments.”

American Literature Association Annual Conference, May 2007

“Porter, War, and Politics,” Beth Alvarez, Chair, Boston, MA, May 26, 2007

Jerry Findley, Indiana University, “Millennial Change: Historicizing the Political Movements of the Twentieth Century.”
Richard Pickering, University of Connecticut, “Jeffersonian-Democrat Hackles: Katherine Anne Porter and the Hollywood Witchhunt.”
Christine L. Grogan, University of South Florida, “A Reading of ‘That Tree’: Katherine Anne Porter as Expatriate.”
Janis Stout, Texas A & M University, “Porter in a World That Kept On Falling.”

American Literature Association Annual Conference, May 2006

“Katherine Anne Porter and the Artist,” Christine Hait, Chair, San Francisco, CA, May 26, 2006

Beth Alvarez, University of Maryland, “Diego Rivera’s Creation and the Mexican Art Scene in Katherine Anne Porter’s ‘The Martyr.'”
Thomas Austenfeld, North Georgia College and State University, “The Spinet and The Coffin: Katherine Anne Porter and the Art of Music.”
David Madden, Louisiana State University, “The Charged Image in ‘Flowering Judas.'”

American Literature Association Annual Conference, May 2005

“Determining the Tragic in Katherine Anne Porter’s Life and Work,” Thomas Austenfeld, Chair, Boston, MA, May 27, 2005

Richard Pickering, University of Connecticut, “Confronting the Sacco-Vanzetti tragedy in The Never-Ending Wrong.”
Christine Hait, Columbia College, “Falling Down: Motion Imagery, Suffering, and the Downward Path to Wisdom in Katherine Anne Porter’s Fiction.”
Lisa Roney, University of Central Florida, “Physical Difference in Ship of Fools: An Interrogation of Eugenics.”
Darlene Unrue, University of Nevada at Las Vegas, “Katherine Anne Porter and the Ordeal of Maternity.”

American Literature Association Annual Conference, May 2004

“International Influences on Katherine Anne Porter’s Life and Writing,” Alexandra Subramanian, Chair, San Francisco, CA, May 27, 2004

Beth Alvarez, “‘A Perfectly Proper Picture’: Mexico and Art in Katherine Anne Porter’s ‘Virgin Violeta.'”
Jerry Findley, “Culture, Politics, and International Conflict in ‘The Leaning Tower.'”
Mary Titus, “Katherine Anne Porter and the Feminist Oriental Tale.”

Jan Bloemendaal, Leiden University, served as the respondent to the papers.

American Literature Association Annual Conference, May 2003

“Katherine Anne Porter and Other Writers: Parallels and Influence,” Darlene Harbour Unrue, Chair, Cambridge, MA, May 24, 2003

Thomas Austenfeld, North Georgia College and State University, “‘Our Cleopatra’: Peter Taylor, Katherine Anne Porter, and Southern Identity.”
Charlotte Goodman, Skidmore College, “Matrilineage: From Virginia Woolf to Katherine Anne Porter, from Katherine Anne Porter to Jean Stafford.”
Shannon Baley, University of Texas at Austin, “Performing Nothing: Grotesque Vaudeville and Landed Tragedy in Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard and Katherine Anne Porter’s ‘Hacienda.'”

American Literature Association Annual Conference, May 2002

“Katherine Anne Porter’s Non-Fiction,” Beth Alvarez, Chair, Long Beach, CA, May 30, 2002

Jeanette McVicker, State University of New York-Fredonia, “Katherine Anne Porter’s Cotton Mather: A Failure of Convergences.”
Jerry Lee Findley, Austin Peay State University, “The Never-Ending Wrong: A Historic Moment of ‘millennial change.'”
Alexandra Subramanian, “‘The Other Half of a Double Life’: Katherine Anne Porter’s Non-fiction Writing and Publishing Obligations.”

Carl Griffin of Georgia Perimeter College/Dunwoody Campus served as the respondent to the papers.

American Literature Association Annual Conference, May 2001

Christine Hait, Chair, Cambridge, MA, May 24, 2001

Elisabeth Lamothe, Université de Bordeaux, France, “Katherine Anne Porter and the Poetics of the Crazy Quilt.”
Gary Ciuba, Kent State University, Trumbull, “‘Given Only Me for Model’: Disciples of Desire in Porter’s ‘The Old Order.'”
Patricia L. Bradley, Northern Kentucky University, “Katherine Anne Porter and the Southern Circus Intertext.”
Thomas Austenfeld, North Georgia College and State University, “Ethical Criticism and Porter’s Voice.”

American Literature Association Annual Conference, May 2000

Thomas Austenfeld, North Georgia College and State University, Chair, Long Beach, CA, May 27, 2000

Andrea Tinnemeyer, Rice University, “Women on the Verge: Writing About the Mexican Revolution.”
Karen Weathermon, Washington State University, “At Home in Books: Utopias and Heterotopias in Katherine Anne Porter’s Domestic Space.”
Alexandra Subramanian, College of William and Mary, “Katherine Anne Porter, Seymour Lawrence and that whole extraordinary episode of Ship of Fools.”

Darlene Unrue, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, summarized and responded to the three papers.

American Literature Association Annual Conference, May 1999

“New Views on Katherine Anne Porter,” Janis Stout, Chair, Stout’s overview of the current state of Porter scholarship followed by three papers, Baltimore, MD, May 28, 1999

Melinda Williams, Texas Woman’s University, “The Rhetorical Use of Memory and Knowing in Porter’s ‘The Grave.'”
Susana M. Jiménez Placer, University of Santiago De Compostela, Galicia, Spain, “Grandmother, Aunt Nannie, and the Rolling Pin of Life.”
Lisa C. Roney, Pennsylvania State University, “Tuberculosis and Changing Views of Illness in Katherine Anne Porter’s Fiction.”

American Literature Association Annual Conference, May 1998

Will Brantley, Chair, San Diego, CA, May 31, 1998

Beth Alvarez, University of Maryland, “The Subtle Politics of ‘He.'”
Trent Masiki, Texas A & M University, “Issues of Black Self-Determination in ‘The Circus’ and ‘The Old Order.'”
Robin Cohen, Southwest Texas State University, “Xochitl, the Virgin of Guadalupe, and Katherine Anne Porter Among the Indians.”

American Literature Association Annual Conference, May 1997

Darlene Unrue, Chair, Baltimore, MD, May 23, 1997

Andrew R. Burke, University of Georgia, “‘A Spiritual Sense of Gravity’: Exile and Self-Identity in Katherine Anne Porter’s Miranda Cycle.”
Mary Titus, St. Olaf College, “‘Fresh Make-Up’: Gender Roles, Social Control, and Costume in Porter’s ‘Pale Horse, Pale Rider.'”
Christine Hait, Columbia College, “The Concept of Wonder in Katherine Anne Porter’s Fiction.”
Joseph Csicsila, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and Eastern Michigan University, “Katherine Anne Porter Anthologized.”

American Literature Association Annual Conference, May 1996

George Hendrick, Chair, San Diego, CA, May 31, 1996

Gary M. Ciuba, Kent State University, Trumbull, “‘If I am to be the heroine of this novel’: Desire, Deceit, and ‘Old Mortality.'”
Beth Alvarez, University of Maryland, “‘Royalty in Exile’: Pre-Hispanic Art and Ritual in ‘María Concepción.'”
Panel discussion, “Katherine Anne Porter Research in Progress/Research Needed,” moderated by George Hendrick. Panelists included Gary Ciuba, Beth Alvarez, Darlene Unrue (University of Nevada, Las Vegas), Jewel Spears Brooker (Eckerd College), and Janis Stout (Texas A & M University).

American Literature Association Annual Conference, May 1995

“Katherine Anne Porter in Context,” Beth Alvarez, Chair, Baltimore, MD,

Charlotte Beck, Maryville College, “‘Grasshopper and Ant’: The Complementary Careers of Katherine Anne Porter and Caroline Gordon.”
Thomas Austenfeld, Drury College, “Porter’s Totalitarianism Revisited.”
Jeanette McVicker, SUNY, Fredonia, “Katherine Anne Porter, the New Criticism, and the ‘New’ Modernism.”

American Literature Association Annual Conference, June 1994

“Katherine Anne Porter: The Southern Connection,” Janis Stout, Chair, San Diego, CA, June 2, 1994

George Hendrick, University of Illinois, “Slaves, Slavery, and the Porters: Myth and Reality in the Fiction of Katherine Anne Porter.”
Merrill Skaggs, Drew University, “Cather’s Influence on Katherine Anne Porter’s ‘He.'”
Margaret Bauer, Texas A & M University,”Understanding Ellen Gilchrist’s ‘Rich’ via Four Porter Intertexts.”

American Literature Association Symposium on Women Writers, October 1993

Virginia Spencer Carr, Chair, San Antonio, TX

Rae Carlton Colley, Emory University, “‘Sick on the Subject of Sex’: Porter’s Marginalia on D. H. Lawrence.”
Janis P. Stout, Texas A & M University, “Katherine Anne Porter’s ‘Reflections on Willa Cather.'”
Darlene Harbour Unrue, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, “Doctor Freud and Miss Katherine Anne Porter.”

American Literature Association Annual Conference, May 1993

“Katherine Anne Porter in the Modern Age,” Darlene Unrue, Chair, Baltimore, MD

Janis Stout, Texas A & M University, “Porter and the Twentieth-Century Intellectual Scene.”
Ruth M. (Beth) Alvarez, University of Maryland, “‘Hacienda’ and Eisenstein’s Que Viva Mexico!”
Will Brantley, Middle Tennessee State University, “Katherine Anne Porter and the Liberal Impulse.”