Melville Society Panels at the 2026 American Literature Association Conference
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
Chair: Jonathan Schroeder, RISD
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
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/
