Saturday, May 27, 2006 11:00am – 12:20pm
Session 18-F Kay Boyle (Pacific Concourse F)
Organized by the Kay Boyle Society
Chair: Thomas Austenfeld, North Georgia College and State University
1. “Kay Boyle’s Indeterminate Contagion,” Jennifer Barker, Stanford University
Barker discussed Death of a Man with particular attention to the discourse of hygiene in fascism, examining metaphors surrounding the Infektionshaus.
2. “Towards a New Imaginary Process: Kay Boyle’s Experiments with the Limits of Representation in Process,” Anne Reynes-Delobel, Université de Provence
Reynes-Delobel discussed Process as "a manifesto of the image" which privileges the act of seeing over the object of contemplation.
3. “Kay Boyle: Twentieth Century Woman of Letters,” Sandra Spanier, Penn State University
Spanier celebrated Boyle's voluminous correspondence and previewed the forthcoming edition of her letters.
4. “The Wandering Woman: The Challenges of Cosmopolitanism in Kay Boyle’s Early Novels,” Alexa Weik, University of California, San Diego
Weik applied theories of cosmopolitanism to Boyle's near-autobiographical novels, emphasizing Boyle as a "citizen of the world" who rejected Cynicism but aligned herself with Stoic interpretations of commitment and connectedness.