The Melville Society is sponsoring two panels at the 2026 American Literature Association Conference, which will be held in Chicago, IL, May 20th-23rd, 2026.
Melville and Justice
Session 4-D: Thursday, May 21, 2026 from 1:00-2:20pm (Salon 1)
Chair: Adam Fales, U of Chicago
1. "Avian Shame and Interspecies justice in Melville’s Billy Budd and Eggers’ The Lighthouse,” Thomas Bryant, Penn State
2. "The Chewed Sermon of Ruthless Democracy: Dialect, Naturalism and Ontology in 'Stubb’s Supper,” Daniel Fulton Cheung, Loyola University Chicago
3. "'Dye hee or Justice must': Billy Budd, Paradise Lost, Queer Subjects, and Patriarchal Law,” David Greven, University of South Carolina
4. "The Metafictions of Indian Hating,” Edward Watts, Michigan State University
Entirely Idle: Melvillean Leisure, Laziness, and Labor
Session 14-B: Friday, May 22, 2026 from 4:00-5:20pm (Kimball)
Chair: Schuyler Chapman, Glenville State University
1. “Bartleby in Little Syria: The Book of Khalid and the Rhetoric of Producerism,” Gianna Bacchetta, Tufts University
2. “‘So, through consumptive pallors of this blank, raggy life, go these white girls to death’: Melville and Mill Girls’ Racialized Labor,” Kassie Jo Baron, University of Tennessee at Martin
3. “Melville’s Indian-Hating and Thoreau’s ‘Indian Life,’” John J. Kucich, Bridgewater State University
Respondent, Ivy Wilson, Northwestern University
For more details on the American Literature Association Conference, see https://americanliteratureassociation.org/ala-conferences/ala-annual-conference/
