Faulkner’s Bodies

2025 Conference Program

The conference will begin on Sunday, July 20, with a reception at the University Museum, after which the academic program of the conference will open with keynote addresses, followed by a buffet supper on the grounds of Faulkner’s home, Rowan Oak.

Over the next four days, a busy schedule of lectures and panels will also make room for teaching sessions, a picnic served at Rowan Oak, guided tours, and a closing party on Thursday afternoon, July 24. Throughout the conference, the University’s J.D. Williams Library will display Faulkner books, manuscripts, photographs, and memorabilia. The University Press of Mississippi will exhibit Faulkner books and titles of related interest published by university presses throughout the United States, and Faulkner collector Seth Berner will give a brown bag lunch presentation on “Collecting Faulkner.”

Keynote Speakers

Aliyyah I. Abdur-Rahman is professor of American studies and English at Brown University. Author of two books, Millennial Style: The Politics of Experiment in Contemporary African Diasporic Culture (2024) and Against the Closet: Black Political Longing and the Erotics of Race (2012), she guest-edited the Faulkner Journal special issue on race, racism, and the work of antiracism (2023) and is coeditor of the forthcoming African American Literature in Transition: The 1950s. Her essays on Faulkner have appeared in the Faulkner and Whiteness (2011) and New Cambridge Companion to William Faulkner (2015) collections, as well as in the Faulkner Journal.

Bénédicte Boisseron is chair of the Department of Afroamerican and African Studies and professor of romance languages and literatures at the University of Michigan. Her publications include Creole Renegades: Betrayal and Guilt in the Caribbean Diaspora (2014), which won the Nicolás Guillén Outstanding Book Award from the Caribbean Philosophical Association and received honorable mention for the Barbara Christian Prize for Best Book in the Humanities from the Caribbean Studies Association, and Afro-Dog: Blackness and the Animal Question (2018). She is also the recipient of numerous research fellowships, including a 2022 Guggenheim Fellowship.

Lisa Hinrichsen is associate professor of English at the University of Arkansas. She is the author of Possessing the Past: Trauma, Imagination, and Memory in Post-Plantation Southern Literature (2015) and coeditor, with Gina Caison and Stephanie Rountree, of Small-Screen Souths: Region, Identity, and the Cultural Politics of Television (2017), Remediating Region: New Media and the US South (2021), and the forthcoming Record, Archive, Document: Constructing the South Out of Region. She served as president of the Society for the Study of Southern Literature for 2018–2020.

Maren Linett is professor of English and Jewish studies and director of the Critical Disability Studies Program at Purdue University. Author of Modernism, Feminism, and Jewishness (2007), Bodies of Modernism: Physical Disability in Transatlantic Modernist Literature (2017), and Literary Bioethics: Animality, Disability, and the Human (2020), she is also editor of Virginia Woolf: An MFS Reader (2009) and The Cambridge Companion to Modernist Women Writers (2010). Her published articles include essays on Woolf, Elizabeth Bowen, Rebecca West, Dorothy Richardson, Jean Rhys, and James Joyce.

Susan Scott Parrish is a professor in the Department of English and in the Program in the Environment at the University of Michigan. Her books include The Flood Year 1927: A Cultural History (2016), which received honorable mention for the James Russell Lowell Prize of the Modern Language Association in 2017; American Curiosity: Cultures of Natural History in the Colonial British Atlantic World (2006); and, as editor or coeditor, the Norton Critical Edition of Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! (2023); The Cambridge Companion to American Literature and the Environment (2022); and Robert Beverley’s The History and Present State of Virginia (2013). She is currently chair of the Michigan Society of Fellows.

Additional speakers and panelists will be selected from the call for papers competition.

2025 Conference Schedule

Walk-up onsite conference registration opens Sunday, July 20, 2025, at 12:00 p.m. at Nutt Auditorium. A reception at the University Museum is set for 1:00 p.m., followed by the first keynote speaker at 2:30 p.m. The conference will conclude with the closing party scheduled for the afternoon of Thursday, July 24.

A detailed program will be added to the website once finalized and provided with the conference registration packet.

2025 Program Participants

A full list of program participants will be posted once the conference schedule is finalized.

Sponsors
The Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference at the University of Mississippi is sponsored by the Department of English and the Center for the Study of Southern Culture and coordinated by the Division of Outreach and Continuing Studies.

University Museum Exhibition
During the conference week the University Museum is hosting several temporary exhibits to complement its permanent collection. Magic Lanterns is an immersive exhibit containing prints of astronomical and astrological imagery sourced from 1860s magic lantern slides from the Millington-Barnard Collection of Scientific Instruments. Magic lanterns, a predecessor of modern slide projectors, were used to swindle, entertain, and enchant their audiences for hundreds of years before the advent of moving pictures. Continued Artistry features Choctaw basket weaving, an important traditional artistry that has been practiced for centuries. Choctaw baskets were first created primarily for utilitarian use and came in myriad shapes and sizes to serve different functions. While production and common use has dwindled in the past century, Native weavers continue the tradition, passing their skill to the next generation. Most contemporary Choctaw basket weavers are still based in Mississippi.

Museum hours are 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., Tuesday through Saturday. For more information, see the museum’s website at museum.olemiss.edu.

Library Displays
The Department of Archives and Special Collections has several exhibits of interest to conference attendees. In addition to showcasing rare and fascinating works from the collections, the exhibit More than Words: The Book as Object features a number of Faulkner works. Another display celebrates this year of Faulkner anniversaries. The department is located on the third floor of the J. D. Williams Library and is open Monday through Friday, 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. For more information, please contact archivesdept@olemiss.edu or call 662-915-1595. 

Annual Display of University Press Books
Books published by the University Press of Mississippi and select other members of the American Association of University Presses will be exhibited from Sunday, July 21, through Wednesday, July 24, in Music Building 148. Books from Violet Valley Bookstore in Water Valley, Mississippi, will also be on display at the exhibit on Monday, July 22 and Tuesday, July 23.

Gifts
Gifts from the William Faulkner Society, as well as donations in memory of John W. Hunt, Faulkner scholar and emeritus professor of literature at Lehigh University, have been made to support the conference and the John W. Hunt Scholar at this year’s conference.

2025 Registration Fees & Information

IN-PERSON ATTENDEES
The registration fee for in-person conference attendance is $150 for students and $300 for other participants. The fee includes admission to all program events, a buffet supper on Sunday, lunch on Monday, a picnic at Rowan Oak on Wednesday, conference session refreshments, and a closing reception on Thursday. The fee does not cover lodging, the optional guided tours of Faulkner Country, or meals, except for those previously mentioned.

ONLINE ATTENDEES
For international scholars, instructors, students, and other Faulkner lovers unable to attend in person, there is also a remote option that will allow you to attend conference sessions online via Zoom. Registration for the remote option is $50 for students and $100 for other participants and does not include social events.

Register

Student Group Discount Package.

A special package is available for five or more students who attend the conference in person as a group. The package includes a reduced conference registration fee of $100 for all student members; the designated group leader will receive a complimentary registration. Accommodations, travel, and meals (other than those covered by the conference registration fee) are the responsibility of the individual. To initiate a group registration, please contact Mary Leach at pdlljac@olemiss.edu or 662-915-7847.

A limited number of registration-fee waivers are available for graduate students who are not presenting work at the conference but are interested in attending. Contact Jay Watson, director, at jwatson@olemiss.edu for details.

Refunds. A refund will be made, less a $20 service charge per registration, for conference registrants who cancel their plans by July 10. No refunds will be made after that date. To initiate a cancellation request, please contact Mary Leach at pdlljac@olemiss.edu or 662-915-7847.

Registration Instructions

Should you have any questions or encounter any issues during the registration process, please contact Mary Leach at 662-915-7847 or pdlljac@olemiss.edu

• Commemorative posters and t-shirts can be ordered separately or as an add-on to your registration.
• Only one participant can register at a time.
• Please have your credit card available when you begin the registration process. You will pay at the end of the registration process.
• We only accept Visa and Mastercard credit card payments.

Register

Conference Details

ACCOMMODATING SPECIAL NEEDS

If you require assistance relating to a disability or have special dietary requirements, please contact Mary Leach at pdlljac@olemiss.edu or 662-915-7847 at least fourteen days prior to the conference.

LODGING

On-campus lodging is available at the Inn at Ole Miss, which offers special conference rates. Lodging in and near Oxford is available at hotels and other facilities. Conference participants should make their own reservations. Visit this page for more information about local lodging options.

Please note that on-campus housing in University of Mississippi Contemporary Halls will not be available for the conference dates.

TRANSPORTATION

Those who plan to fly to the conference should book their flights to and from Memphis (Tennessee) International Airport (MEM). From Thursday, July 17, to Sunday, July 27, the Division of Outreach offers a shuttle service for conference participants who arrive at the Memphis International Airport (approximately 75 miles or 1-hour-and-15-minute drive).

The cost of the shuttle is $145 round trip or $95 one way. Shuttle reservations must be made and paid for at least seven business days in advance.

If you would like to use the Division of Outreach shuttle service, please contact the Transportation Office, Division of Outreach and Continuing Education, via email at shuttle@olemiss.edu no later than July 7, 2025, to make your reservation. Your email must include the following information:

• Subject line: Faulkner Conference
• Name of Passenger(s)
• Flight date(s)
• Flight number(s)
• Flight arrival/departure time(s)
• Passenger’s cell phone #
• Passenger’s email
• Location at which to be dropped off or picked up in Oxford

Shuttles will be confirmed via email by Tuesday, July 15. Please meet your shuttle driver inside the airport at Baggage Claim, Area B escalator.

Should your arriving flight be delayed, please call the Transportation After Hours phone at 662-816-7165 and if necessary, leave a voicemail message with your name and new arrival time. If you are unable to meet the next shuttle(s) you will be required either to stay over in Memphis and take the 10:00 a.m. shuttle the next day, if available, or to rent a car.

Faulkner Posters

Flat copies of Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference posters with illustrations are available for $5 each plus tax, shipping, and handling. To order posters, please email pdlljac@olemiss.edu with the quantity and poster(s) you are interested in purchasing.

Special Thanks

The 2025 Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference poster is produced through the generous support of the City of Oxford and the Oxford Convention & Visitors Bureau.

The conference organizers are grateful to all the individuals and organizations that support Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha annually, and they offer special thanks this year to the College of Liberal Arts, the Department of English, the Center for the Study of Southern Culture, University of Mississippi Libraries, University Museums, the City of Oxford, and the Oxford Convention and Visitors Bureau.