SSML Resources
Calls for Proposals/Papers
SSML @ M/MLA & MLA
SSML sponsors sessions at the annual Midwest Modern Language Association and Modern Language Association conferences. Participation on SSML-sponsored panels is open to current SSML members with fully paid dues. If interested in participating in either session, please contact Marilyn Atlas (atlas@ohio.edu).
M/MLA Panels
- “From ‘Hoboes’ to ‘Comrades’: Revolutionary Hope in Hobo News, a 20th-Century Migrant Newspaper,” Marc Blanc, Washington University St. Louis
- “The Matriarchal Zook Family Women in the Novel The Waters by Bonnie Jo Campbell,” Janet Ruth Heller, Independent Scholar
- “Finding ‘An Ornament of Comfort, a Grave and Tremulous Spring of Joy,’: Oklahoma Migrants and Hope in Sanora Babb’s 1939 novel Whose Names Are Unknown,” Marilyn Judith Atlas, Ohio University
- “Is Winesburg, Ohio‘s George Willard an Unwitting Contributor to His Neighbors’ Neuroses?” Robert Dunne, Central Connecticut State University
- “Foucauldian Medical Perception and the Modern Midwest in Sinclair Lewis’s Arrowsmith,” Shaun F. Richards, Finger Lakes Community College
- “‘Weathering’ and Tillie Olsen’s Tell Me a Riddle as Midwestern Cautionary Tale,” Marilyn Judith Atlas, Ohio University
- “’We can’t stop living’: Not Enough Heartland Love for Carmen Maria Machado’s Queer Midwest Memoir, In the Dream House (2019),” Patrick S. Allen and Haley M. Bateman, Elizabethtown College
- “Roughneck Style: Fashioning Radical, Interracial Regionalism in The Anvil,” Marc Blanc, Washington University St. Louis
- “Going OUT in the Midwest: Brandon Taylor’s Real Life,” Heather Levy, Western Connecticut State University
- “Joy, Abridged: Ross Gay’s The Book of Delights and the Paradoxical Indulgence of Flash Nonfiction,” Hannah Kroonblawd, Malone University
- “What Susan Glaspell Gave Democracy in 1921: Grooming in “Love of the Hills,” “Trifles,” and The Verge,” Marilyn Judith Atlas, Ohio University
- “Clara Ann Thompson, Priscilla Jane Thompson, and Aaron Belford Thompson: Republishing Post-Reconstruction Black Poets in the ‘Post-Now,’” Patricia Oman, Hastings College
- “Life on the Farm: Memoirs of the Family Farm and the American Dream,” Michele Willman, University of Minnesota Crookston
- “What’s the Matter with Iowa? Race and Religion in Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead Novels,” John Rohrkemper, Elizabethtown College
- “Bette Howland, Blue in Chicago, Public Spaces, and the American Dream,” Marilyn Judith Atlas, Ohio University
- “Rewriting the Chicago Renaissance: Collectively Creating the Midwest—from Hamlin Garland to Gwendolyn Brooks, 1900-1945,” Aaron Cliff Babcock, Ohio U
- “Community and the Unkillability of Eugene Henderson in Saul Bellow’s 1959 novel, Henderson the Rain King,” Marilyn Judith Atlas, Ohio U
- “Toni Morrison, the Haunting Legacies of the American South, and the Creation of a Midwest Community.” Alejandra Marie Ortega, Purdue U
MLA Panels
- “The Poetics of Collective Efficacy: Gwendolyn Brooks and Eve Ewing in Chicago,” Jared Hackworth, University of Illinois, Chicago
- “Reclaiming Richard Wright’s Radical Racial and Proletarian Politics,” Lydia Burleson, Stanford University
- “‘a partitioned city’: Liminality and the Working-Class in Bette Howland’s ‘Blue in Chicago,'” Kane Kijek, Ohio University
- “Resemblances and Feminist Agency in Sanora Babb’s 1939 Dustbowl Novel Whose Names Are Unknown,” Marilyn Judith Atlas, Ohio University
- “Foucauldian Analysis of Visibility, Power, and Knowledge in Sinclair Lewis’s Arrowsmith,” Shaun Richards, Finger Lakes Community College
- “Making the Invisible Visible: from Nella Larsen’s Quicksand to Gwendolyn Brooks’ Emmet Till Poems,” Marilyn Judith Atlas, Ohio University, Athens
- “The Invisible Dark Dangers of Urban Design in Adrienne Kennedy’s Ohio State Murders,” Jared Hackworth, University of Illinois at Chicago
- “Making the Unspoken Visible in Mona Susan Power’s A Council of Dolls,” Michele Willman, University of Minnesota Crookston
- “Small Bursts of Joy: Dawn Powell’s Imaginative Return Home in My Home Is Far Away,” Jericho Williams, Spartanburg Methodist College
- “Social Change and Personal Happiness in Lorraine Hansberry’s The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window,” Marilyn Judith Atlas, Ohio University
- “The Joy-Sorrow Continuum in Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five,” Jayne Waterman, Ashland University
- “Majestic Canopy and Gnarled Roots: Joy and Sorrow in Richard Powers’s Overstory,” John Rohrkemper, Elizabethtown College
- “The City in Which I Love You: Asian American Poets and the Urban Midwest,” Timothy Yu, University of Wisconsin
- “Crumbling Houses and Electric Dreams: Postwar Posthumanism in Raymond DeCapite’s A Lost King,” Aaron Babcock,Ohio U, Athens
- “Safety Pins and Hidden Tears: Textual Healing in Louise Erdrich’s Love Medicine,” Ross Tangedal, U of Wisconsin, Stevens Point
- “Writing English with an Accent: Bette Howland’s Blue in Chicago and the Defamiliarized Image,” Marilyn Judith Atlas, Ohio U, Athens
Other Organizations That Suport the Study of Midwest Culture
Black Midwest Initiative: www.theblackmidwest.com
Modern Language Association (MLA): www.mla.org
Midwest Modern Language Association (MMLA): www.luc.edu/mmla
Midwest Popular Culture Association: www.mpcaaca.org
American Literature Association: www.americanliteratureassociation.org
Association for the Study of Literature and Environment: www.asle.org
Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association: pcaaca.org
Poetry Society of Michigan: poetrysocietyofmichigan.wordpress.com
Detroit Working Writers: www.detworkingwriters.org
Midwestern History Association: www.midwesternhistory.com/
Members are also responsible for publishing and editing the following:
The New Territory‘s Literary Landscapes
Patricia A. Anderson Library Endowment for Children’s Books
In 2007, David Anderson established a special fund at Michigan State University Library honoring Pat Anderson’s extraordinary devotion to library work and children’s literature. The endowment will support the acquisition and preservation of a collection of children’s literature that will be housed in the Special Collections division of the Michigan State University Main Library. To read more about the collection and to donate to the Patricia A. Anderson Library Endowment Fund for Children, go to this MSU Libraries page.
Friends and admirers of Pat who may honor her memory may consider contributing to the Patricia A. Anderson Library Endowment for Children’s Books and find information on how to do so here.
You are welcome to call the Michigan State University development office at 517.432.6123, ext. 137, with any questions or concerns.