First International Doris Lessing Conference

April 1-4, 2004

Delgado Community College

The First International Doris Lessing Society Conference was held in New Orleans from April 1-4, 2004.

The conference began 7 p.m. on Thursday, April 1 with a welcoming reception at the Hampton Hotel in Metarie (15 miles from the French Quarter). Highlights of the conference include the following: a keynote address by noted Lessing scholar Professor Roberta Rubenstein at a catered luncheon at Delgado College on Friday, April 2; a crawfish boil dinner at the College on Friday evening; and a riverboat dinner with a jazz band on Saturday night.

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Conference Directors

Debrah Raschke, Southeast Missouri State University

Phyllis Perrakis, University of Ottawa

Brenda Bryant, Delgado Community College

Robin Visel, Furman College

Keynote Speaker: Roberta Rubenstein

Roberta Rubenstein is the author of four books, including the seminal The Novelistic Vision of Doris Lessing: Breaking the Forms of Consciousness.  She has published numerous articles and book chapters on modern and contemporary writers and has been the recipient of numerous prestigious awards and honors. Her essay "Feminism, Eros, and the Coming of Age," which received the MLA Women's Caucus award for scholarship in 1999, is only one of many impressive honors she has received.

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to the Delgado Foundation who supplied the refreshments and the Delgado Communication Faculty who provided food. Many thanks as well to Provost Jane Stephens (Southeast Missouri State University) who provided the Shrimp and Crab plates, the Brie wheel and the Rockefeller Pirogues.

Thanks to Kristi Embry (Purdue University), Ruth Seaber (Southeast Missouri State University), and Charles Hearn for their help in pre-conference planning. Thanks as well to Dayna Northington (Southeast Missouri State University), Dr. Carol Scates (Department Chair, Southeast Missouri State University), Ginger McCloud, and CSTL (Southeast Missouri State University) for their assistance respectively with mailing preparations, copying of pre-conference materials, facilitating international communications, and web support. Many thanks as well to various members of the Virginia Woolf Society who generously offered their guidance and wisdom in this process. 

 Book Exhibit: Bayou Signette

Student Life Center, Delgado Community College

 Message Board: Hampton Inn, second floor (next to the registration desk)

 Copying: Student Life Center, first floor
 

Thursday, April 1
Reception at the Hampton Inn: 6:00 p.m.

Opening Remarks:

Dr. Alex Johnson: Chancellor of Delgado Community College,

Phyllis Perrakis:  Conference Director (University of Ottawa)

Debrah Raschke: Conference Director & President of the Doris Lessing Society

            (Southeast Missouri State University)

Friday, April 2:
Continental Breakfast: 6 a.m. to 10 a.m

Hampton Hotel

Registration: Hampton Inn, Second Floor

Sectional Meetings: Student Life Center, Delgado Community College

1a. Cultural Myth and Cultural Memory:  Friday, April 2 9:00-10:15 
Chair: Terry Reilly, University of Alaska, Fairbanks
Bayou St. John

 Antoinette F. Winstead, Our Lady of the Lake University, Texas
"The Summer Before the Dark: A Mythical Journey of Rediscovery"

Marilyn Dallman Seymour, Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature, Book Review Editor
"Lessing Revises Freud: Memoirs of a Survivor and 'The Uncanny'"

Elizabeth Neiman, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
"Ben, the 'Neanderthal': Science Fiction and Scientific Exploration in Doris Lessing's The Fifth Child and Ben, in the World"

 Anne Serafin, Independent Scholar
"I'm Just a Storyteller"

1b. Courting the Postmodern: Narrative Transgressions, Experiment in Form,
Friday, April 2  9:00-10:15
Chair: Debrah Raschke, Southeast Missouri State University
Bayou La Fourche

Swaty Mitra, University of Calcutta
"Pluralizing the 'Self' in The Four-Gated City"

Susan Watkins, Leeds Metropolitan University, UK
"Writing in a Minor Key: Doris Lessing's Late Twentieth-Century Fiction"

Zachar Laskewicz, NIGHT SHADES music-theatre-language NACHTSCHIMMEN, Belgium
"The Insistent Power of Inner-Space Narrative Techniques"

Yuan-Jung Cheng, National Sun Yat-sen University, Taiwan
"The Loss of Parody in The Golden Notebook"

2. Tropes of Place:  Friday, April 2 10:30-11:45
Chairs: Virginia Tiger, Rutgers University
Claire Sprague, Professor Emeritus, Brooklyn College, CUNY
Bayou St. John

Terry Reilly, University of Alaska, Fairbanks
Melissa Ide, Independent Scholar
"Utopian And Dystopian Visions of the City in Lessing's Works"

Pat Louw, University of Zululand, South Africa
"Huts, Houses and the Spaces Between Them in Doris Lessing's African Stories"

Micki Nyman, Saint Louis University
"Intersecting Spaces in Olive Schreiner and Doris Lessing"

Luncheon & Keynote: Friday, April 2 12:00-1:30
Lac Maurepas Room

Keynote Speaker Roberta Rubenstein

 3. Comparative Lessing: Friday, April 2 1:45-3:00
Chair: Phyllis Perrakis, University of Ottawa
Bayou St. John

Pillar Hidalgo, Malaga University, Spain
"Lessing and A. S. Byatt: Writing The Golden Notebook in the 1990s"

 Amanda Cole, University of Sydney, Australia
 "Prophetic Pasts in the Works of Lessing and Atwood"

Li Jin, Beijing University of Technology, China
"Solitary Soul or Complementary Communion?: Lessing’s The Summer Before the Dark and Chopin’s The Awakening"

K. Ruth Seaber, Southeast Missouri State University
"Synergistic Narratives: Politics and Intertextuality in Doris Lessing and Arundhati Roy"

3b. Africa, Colonialism, Postcolonialism: Friday April 2 1:45-3:00
Chairs: Linda Weinhouse, Community of College of Baltimore County

Anne Serafin, Independent Scholar
Bayou La Fourche

Julie Cairnie, University of Guelph, Canada
"Doris Lessing and the Land Crisis in Zimbabwe"

Sarah DeMul, Belle Van Zuylen Institute, UK
"Parodying the Colonial Travel Genre: Representations of 'Home' in Doris Lessing's African Laughter: Four Visits to Zimbabwe"

Victoria Rosner, Texas A & M University
"'Speak up for yourself, now,' Doris commanded: Postcolonial Literary Legacies in Tsitsi Dangarembga's Nervous Conditions"

Linda Weinhouse, Community of College of Baltimore County
"The Ironic Journey from the Margin to the Center"

Reversed: Lessing and Gordimer"
 

4a. Sex, Age, and Commodification, Friday, April 2 3:15-4:30
Ann Serafin, Independent Scholar
Bayou La Fourche

Ruth Saxton, Mills College
"Sex after Sixty?: Lessing's Older Women"

Pamela Grieman, University of Southern California
"Sacrificial Violence and Excess Expenditure in The Good Terrorist"

Carole Laviolette, Independent Scholar
"Approaches to Individuality"

Josna Rege, Dartmouth College
"The Child is Mother of the Woman: Exchange between Age and Youth in Doris Lessing"

5a. Terrorism and Trauma: Friday, April 2
Chair: Debrah Raschke, Southeast Missouri State University
Bayou St. John

Rose Marie Cutting, St. Mary's University, Texas
"The Self-Divided: Doris Lessing's May Quest"

Jeanie Warnock, University of Ottawa, Canada
"Awakening from the Past: Trauma, Recovery, and Evolution in the Works of Doris Lessing"

Sandra Singer, University of Guelph, Canada,
"London or Kabul: Assessing the Politics of Political Violence"

Respondent:  Suzette Henke, University of Louisville

5b. Exploring Interior Spaces:  Friday, April 2 4:45-6:00
Chair: Ruth Saxton, Mills College
Bayou La Fourche

Lindsay Merrifield, Lakehead University,
"Finding 'A Way Outa No Way': The Golden Notebook as Ecriture Feminine"        

Sheryl Stevenson, University of Akron,
"The Devil and Mrs. Jones: Depression's Other Self and Language in 'To Room Nineteen'"

Alison Reynolds, Midwestern State University.
"Doris Lessing: Authorizing the Self"

Misty McCormick-Chisum, Southeast Missouri State University
"Seeking the Other: Gendered Zones and Discontent in Doris Lessing’s The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four, and, Five"

Saturday, April 3:

 Continental Breakfast: 6 a.m to 10 p.m.
Hampton Hotel

Registration: Hampton Inn, Second Floor
Sectional Meetings: Student Life Center, Delgado Community College

6. Teaching Lessing, Saturday, April 3 9:30-10:45
Chair:  Ruth Saxton, Mills College,Bayou St. John

 Suzette Henke, University of Louisville
"The Challenges of Teaching Doris Lessing's Golden Notebook after 9/11/01"

Joyce Durham, University of Dayton
"The Fifth Child:  A Lesson in What It Means to Be Human"

Jeboon Yu, Pusan National University, Korea
"Feminist Education in English Literature: Doris Lessing's 'A Woman on the Roof' and The Grass is Singing"

 Debrah Raschke, Southeast Missouri State University
"Expected and Unexpected Challenges of Teaching Memoirs and The Fifth Child"

7. Lessing and Uses of Memory: Saturday, April 3 11:00-12:15
Chair Roberta Rubenstein, American University
Bayou St. John

Anne-Laure Brevet, l'Université de Brest
"Flights of Memory: Digression and Allusion in Doris Lessing's Memoirs of a Survivor"

Robin Visel, Furman University
"House/Mother: Remembering Postwar London"

Respondent: Claire Sprague, Professor Emeritus at City Univ. of New York

Lunch: 12:15-1:30
Lac Maurepas Room

 8. Narrative Forays:  Saturday, April 3 1:45-3:00
Chair: Sandra Singer, University of Guelph, Canada
Bayou St. John

Virginia Tiger, Rutgers University
"Love Again, The Interleaved Fictions"

Linda Chown, Grand Valley State University, Michigan
"Revisiting Reliable Narration: Doris Lessing and the Politics of Perspective"

Alice Ridout, University of Toronto, Canada
"'What is the Function of the Storyteller?': The Relationship Between Why and How Lessing Writes"

Ozlem Uzundemir, Baskent University, Turkey
"Narrative Techniques in Doris Lessing's Stories"

9a. Adventures of the Spirit: Saturday, April 3  3:15-4:30
Chair: Paul Schlueter, Independent Scholar
Bayou La Fourche

Phyllis Perrakis, University of Ottawa, Canada
"The Luminous Face of the Other in Memoirs"

M. Catherine Burns, Florida Atlantic University
"Searching in Exile: Martha Quest in Martha Quest and the Speaker of T. S. Eliot's 'Ash Wednesday'"

Kayoko Saito, Waseda University, Tokyo
"A Trap in Intelligence: 'To Room Nineteen'"

Ratna Raman, Delhi University, India
 "Women and Ageing: The Body in Time"

9b.Lessing and Woolf:  Saturday, April 3  3:00-4:15
Chair: Sally Jacobsen, Northern Kentucky University

Bayou St. John

Tonya Krouse, Northern Kentucky University

"'Anon,' 'Free Women,' and the Pleasures of Impersonality: Writing, Subjectivity, and Sexuality in Woolf and Lessing"

Kimberly Crowley, University of North Dakota

"A Struggle of Their Own: Women, Marriage, and Writing in The Golden Notebook, Orlando, and A Room of One's Own"

Aaron S. Rosenfeld,  Iona College, New York

"'The Unreal City': Lessing, Woolf, and their Radical Epistemologies of Place"

Sally Jacobsen,  Northern Kentucky University

"Lessing's and Woolf's Portrayals of Old Ladies and Class Leveling: The Diary of a Good Neighbor and Between the Acts"

River Boat Dinner:

Attendees will gather in the Hampton lobby for the bus at 6:00

Closing Remarks at the River Boat Dinner:

Debrah Raschke, Conference Director & President of the Doris Lessing Society

Phyllis Perrakis, Conference Director

Sunday, April 4:

Continental Breakfast: 6AM to 10am

Hampton Hotel