Marilynne Robinson Symposium
Friday 10th June 2016
Nottingham Trent University

Since the publication of her debut novel, Housekeeping, in 1980, critics have celebrated Marilynne Robinson as a singular author of American fiction. A prolific essayist, teacher, and public speaker, she is best known for a trilogy of historical novels set in the small town of Gilead, Iowa: the Pulitzer Prize winning Gilead (2004) and its “partner” novels, Home (2008) and Lila (2014). This one-day symposium seeks to chart the development of critical opinion on Robinson and welcomes papers on any aspect of her fiction and collected/uncollected nonfiction. We are particularly interested in submissions that address the following areas:
· Regionalism and the role of the “Middle West” in Robinson’s writing
· Portrayals of small town America in the work of Robinson and her contemporaries
· Robinson’s use of domestic spaces and her portrayal of the American family
· The ecocritical concerns of Robinson’s fiction/nonfiction
· The importance of time and temporality in the Gilead novels
· Robinson’s influence on contemporary writers via her role in the Iowa Writers’ Workshop
· Review culture, prize giving, and the production of “literary” fiction
· Robinson’s stated influences, including Emily Dickinson, Herman Melville, Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman, and the Bible
· Robinson’s engagement with history, particularly the ongoing relevance of the American Civil War and Civil Rights movement to contemporary politics
· The role of Congregationalist and/or Calvinist traditions in Robinson’s writing
· Robinson and US intellectual history, particularly the forgotten intellectual traditions of the Midwest
· Readings of gender and/or sexuality in Robinson’s fiction
· The Gilead novels and their relationship with genre, including popular religious fictions, romances, westerns, or historical novels
· Robinson’s international reputation

Please email abstracts of no more than 300 words with your institutional affiliation and a brief bio to robinsonsymposium@gmail.com – no later than Monday 18 January 2016. Speakers will be notified by 19 February 2016.

The conference organisers are Dr Rachel Sykes, Jenny Daly, and Anna Maguire Elliott.
@robinsonsymposium16 robinsonsymposium.wordpress.com