Call for Papers

Two specific attractions in Kansas City, Missouri, each relevant to Hemingway’s life and writings, have inspired the theme "War + Ink": the Liberty Memorial, now designated the National World War I Museum, and The Kansas City Star. Conference participants will have the opportunity to visit both of these sites and, in the process, to reflect on Hemingway’s dramatic experiences in 1917 and 1918, especially his service on the Italian Front, which led to a life-altering brush with death (and with love), and his no less transformative months as a cub reporter covering the urban war zones of Kansas City.

At the same time, the title "War + Ink" prompts a more general consideration of the intersection between war and ink—between violence and art, bloodshed and beauty—that defines Hemingway’s style, his characters, and even his Modernist aesthetics. Moreover, Hemingway’s important connections to Kansas City, a place located far from the romantic destinations more commonly associated with this life-long traveler (Paris, Madrid, Venice, Havana, etc.), point to the complexities of his relationship with region, whether exotic or seemingly mundane.

Proposals on all aspects of Hemingway’s life and writings are welcome. However, the conference organizers are particularly interested in proposals that relate in some way to the following topics:

• New perspectives on Hemingway’s experience in World War I
• Hemingway’s World War I writings within an international context
• The effect of Hemingway’s newspaper training on his early and late journalism, non-fiction and fiction, including questions about ethics, style and his influence on later journalists
• Memorialization as a theme in Hemingway’s life and art
• Hemingway as a Midwestern (or anti-Midwestern) writer and/or as an American modernist in relation and contrast to other Midwesterners and/or modernists
• Hemingway, jazz and race, including considerations of his influence on or rejection by African-American writers
• Hemingway’s aesthetics of violence (or his violent aesthetics)
• Kansas City as the "incubator" for Hemingway’s adulthood and his later fiction, including characters such as Jake Barnes and stories such as "A Pursuit Race," "One Reader Writes" and "God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen"
• Biography and Hemingway: problems, interpretations, consensus.

Selected papers will be considered for publication. To be considered as a presenter at the conference, please send a 250-word abstract to either Steven Trout (strout@fhsu.edu) or Gail Sinclair (gsinclair@rollins.edu) by September 30, 2007.

Conference participants must be members in good standing of the Hemingway Society. Membership information is available on-line at hemingwaysociety.org. Graduate students presenting papers are encouraged to apply for a James Hinkle Travel Grant. For questions about conference planning and logistics: Steve Paul (paul@kcstar.com).