Cormac McCarthy and the Texas The 2017 Literary Tradition The Keynote Talk by Cormac Don Graham Cormac McCarthy Don Graham, Professor of English at the University of Texas at Austin, is McCarthy an authority on Texas literature and culture. His books include Cowboys and Cadillacs: How Hollywood Looks at Texas (1983), No Name on the Bullet: A Biogra- Journal Society phy of Audie Murphy (1989); Giant Country: Essays on Texas; Lone Star Literature: A Texas Anthology (2003); Kings of Texas: The 150-Year Saga of an American Ranching Empire (2004), which won the T.I.L. Carr P. Collins Prize for Best Nonfiction Book; stacey peebles, editor Conference and State of Minds: Texas Culture and Its Discontents (2011). He has published often in Texas Monthly and has won numerous teaching awards, including The Cormac McCarthy Journal Alcalde’s Top Ten Professors Ever Award in 2014. He has been teaching UT’s famous is a peer-reviewed journal course on “Life and Literature of the Southwest” for decades. His newest book is ISSN 2333-3073 | E-ISSN 2333-3065 Giant: Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, James Dean, Edna Ferber and the Making of a focusing on the works and Biannual | Available in print or online Legendary American Film. It will be published by St. Martin’s Press in Spring 2018. influence of Cormac McCarthy. The journal publishes articles, Individuals (2018 prices) 1 Year (2 issues): $49 (print or online) notes, and reviews related to 1 Year (2 issues): $70 (print and online) Cormac McCarthy’s novels, Here’s what folks in-the-know know... dramas, and screenplays, Libraries/Institutions (2018 prices) First Time in Austin? the film adaptations of his 1 Year (2 issues): $120 (print or online) 1 Year (2 issues): $168 (print and online) work, and other appropriate Restaruants scholarly materials. CMJ is the Texas Chili Parlor (as made famous by Guy Clark’s “Dublin Blues”) primary clearinghouse for the Moonshine Grill (upscale comfort food) growing critical conversation Ranch 616 (Southwestern) about McCarthy’s work and Eddie V’s (seafood and steaks) Lambert’s (fancy BBQ) is affiliated with The Cormac Frank (exotic hot dogs) McCarthy Society. Jeffrey’s (new American cuisine) Hut’s/Frank & Angie’s (old-school hamburgers/pizza) Chez Nous (French bistro) Manuel’s (excellent Mexican) Roaring Fork (upscale Western) La Traviata (Italian trattoria) Submissions to: www.editorialmanager.com/mccarthy Culture and Entertainment from the hotel... 6th Street Entertainment District 1 block north PENN STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS Bob Bullock State History Museum 1/2 mile northwest www.psupress.org LBJ Presidential Library 1/2 mile north [email protected] st rd Texas State Capitol 7 blocks northwest August 31 - September 3 University of Texas Campus 1/2 mile north Hilton Austin, 500 E. 4th Street the Harry Ransom Center (on UT campus) 1/2 mile north Special Thanks to Professor Dan Warner (Graphic Design, Zilker Park & Gardens 2 miles west Austin, Texas South Congress Shopping & Entertainment 2 miles south Kansas State University) for the conference’s poster and media design. Thursday, August 31st Meeting Room 408 Saturday, September 2nd Meeting Room 408 Sunday, September 3rd Meeting Room 408 5:30pm – Check-in 8:00am – Check-in and Registration 8:00am – Check-in and Registration 6:00pm – Welcome 9:00am – Session 12 6:15pm – Session 1 9:00am – Session 7 Violence Beginnings Chair: Dustin AndersonTheology, Cosmology, and Philosophy Chair: Eliot White Chair: Steven Frye Russell Hillier: Two Men in a Trick Bag: Unpacking McCarthy’s “Professor Adrian Mioc: The Nature of Violence in Blood Meridian Michael Crews : “Books Are Made Out of Books”: A Study of Influence of Darkness” and “Emissary of Jesus” in The Sunset Limited Stephanie Reents: The Absence of Interiority and Violence in John Vanderheide :The Very Life of the Darkness: The Function of the Ben West: Cosmic Cormac: Space, Cosmology, and Multiverse Theory in Blood Meridian Epigraphs in Blood Meridian the Works of Cormac McCarthy Angel Lua: “Truths of men, not of history”: Simulacra and the Rhetoric of David Cremean: Protestantism and Cormac McCarthy’s The Sunset Limited Violence in McCarthy’s The Crossing Christian Carter: The Gunpowder Communion: Syncretism and , September 1st Meeting Room 408 Ceremony in Blood Meridian Friday 10:45am – Session 8 8:00am – Check-in and Registration Chair: Stacey Peebles Chaos, Chirality, and McCarthy’s Bleakscape Richard Rankin Russell: “You must go on, I can’t go on, I’ll go on”: 10:45am – Session 13 Literary Influence and Response 9:00am – Session 2 The Road Beckett’s Influence on McCarthy Chair: Brad Bannon Chair: David Cremean Bryan Giemza: Nature’s Script and McCarthy’s Order William Cobb: From Samovars to Saddles: Contrasting Cormac Eliot White: “Do you think I lie to you?”: Theory of Mind inThe Road Ryan Womack: “Moons, men, coins”: Chaos Science, Agency, and McCarthy’s and Leo Tolstoy’s Visions of History Diletta De Cristofaro: “Borrowed time and borrowed world”: Catholicism in Cormac McCarthy Jill Shreve: An Echo of Evil or The Devil 2.0: How McCarthy’s Judge Anti-apocalyptic Chronotopes in The Road Holden Is Based on O’Connor’s Voice and Lavender-Eyed Man Katherine Sugg: Narrating the Nonhuman in Zone One and The Road Liana Andreasen: The Living River of Suttree: from Twain and Faulkner to 12:15pm Meeting Room 410 Keynote Presentation Haske and Cooper 10:45am – Session 3 New Frontiers in McCarthy Studies Chair: Russell Hillier 2:00pm – Session 9 Geography and Spaces Meeting Room 408 1:30pm – Session 14 Nell Sullivan: The Counselor, Pornography, and Femicide Chair: Nell Sullivan Chair: Steven Frye Men, Meaning, and Drinking Dianne Luce: Resisting Eviction: Ballard Rising in Outer Dark Nick Monk: Desert Gothic Jamie Brummer: McCarthy’s Turn to the West and American Manhood Stacey Peebles: Kekulé in the Context of McCarthy Studies Katerina Bartova: “The world has no name”: Maps and Mazes in Cormac John Mark Robison: Beverages as Communal Symbol in No Country for McCarthy’s Fiction Old Men Brad Bannon: “Where you from, heh?”: Specters of the North in 2:00pm – Session 4 Borders, Border Crossings, Borderlands McCarthy’s Fiction Chair: Rick Wallach 2:30pm CT Mexica: Decolonial Border Thinking in the Borderland Narratives of Closing Remarks Cormac McCarthy 3:30pm – Session 10 Authority Calvin Hoovestol: No Company for Cold Men: Borderlands Naturalism Chair: Dianne Luce of Cormac McCarthy’s Llewelyn Moss Scott Yarbrough: Parents and the Border Trilogy Jeff Scraba: “I always knew that you had to be willing to die to even do this job”: No Country for Old Men as Hardboiled Crime Fiction 3:00pm – Session 5 Storytelling Vincent Mennella: The Sociopolitical Authority of a True Dancer Chair: Scott Yarbrough Katja Laug: Cormac McCarthy’s Broken Bodies: An Aesthetics of Special Exhibit by the Wittliff Collections Jonathan Bishop: Coke Cans and “Carrying the Fire”: Walter Benjamin’s Resistance Katie Salzmann, Lead Archivist of the Wittliff Collections at Texas State “The Storyteller” meets Cormac McCarthy’s The Road University, created this exhibit from materials in the Cormac McCarthy Papers. The Lindsay Atnip: Blood Meridian and the Apocalyptic Sublime 5:15pm – Session 11 McCarthy Papers were acquired in 2007 as part of the Wittliff’s Southwestern Writers Bryan Vescio: The Redemption of Language: McCarthy’s Wittgenstein Chair: Jeff Scraba War and Conflict Collection, and include correspondence, notes, typed and handwritten drafts, setting Fredrik Svensson: “Rigid homologues of viscera”: Autonomy and Wallis Sanborn: Seeking the Vietnam War in the Coen Brothers’ No copies and proofs, and materials relating to both published and unpublished works. Heteronomy in the Novels of Cormac McCarthy Country for Old Men Charles Fox: For Better or Worse: Filmic Infidelity in No Country for Old 4:45pm – Session 6 Men and The Road Chair: Ben West Teaching McCarthy Tom Hendry: From Touch of Evil to Sicario: Placing the Film Versions of Andrew Virdin: McCarthy’s Writing for High School Students: An No Country for Old Men and The Counselor in the US/Mexico Drug Wars Rick Wallach: Vietnam on the Border: Shadows of a Misbegotten War in Exploration of Teaching His Novels in the Classroom Conference Organizers: Cormac McCarthy’s Border Fiction Briagha Stevens: Teaching McCarthy as Poet: Syntactic Symbolism in The Steven Frye, California State University, Bakersfield Road Stacey Peebles, Centre College Cassie Polasek: “Things abandoned long ago”: Teaching Hamlet through Dustin Anderson, Georgia Southern University The Road Please join us in Room 410 for our Receptions Scott Jarvie & Pat Sitzer: Pedagogies of the Plains: Reading and Teaching on Friday and Saturday evenings at 7:00pm. The Border Trilogy.