Dear Members of the Edith Wharton Society,
I would like to extend my heartfelt wishes for a happy and healthy new year to you all. Thanks to your scholarship on Edith Wharton, your commitment to the Edith Wharton Society, and your support to the Society’s work, we have kept our community strong and we hope to continue doing so in 2024. Let me take this opportunity to celebrate your work and to mark important endeavors for this year.
We are delighted to join forces with the Transatlantic Literary Women for the Edith Wharton Birthday Talk next week (January 24, 5:00 pm UK/ Noon EST). Upon Laura Rattray’s unfailing initiative, this talk has become a wonderful tradition. This year, we are excited to welcome Prof. Gary Totten (U of Nevada, Las Vegas), well-known Wharton scholar, who will talk on “Edith Wharton’s Geographical Imagination: Notes from the Travel Writing.” You can find more information and the Zoom link directly below:
This year has started with the EWS panel at the MLA conference; chaired by Melanie Dawson, the panel featured presentations on Wharton and Celebration by Fred Wegener and Gary Totten. The call for papers for next year’s MLA will be published in February (please send proposals!). Our Vice-President, Jay Jessee, organized two fantastic panels on Wharton and Beauty at last year’s ALA conference in Boston and is planning more on Wharton and Emotion at this year’s ALA in Chicago (May 23-26, 2024). Don’t hesitate to get in touch if you are interested in organizing a Wharton-themed panel at a future conference (e.g., the regional MLAs, such as SAMLA/PAMLA). It’s been a long time since our Society has gathered at a dedicated conference and we are doing our best to make it happen in the next few years.
Along with conferences and talks, the Edith Wharton Review remains a great forum for Wharton scholarship. I am grateful to Rita Bode’s gracious editorship and to you all for supporting not only established but also new voices in Wharton Studies. The EWR heartily welcomes submissions not only of traditional articles but also shorter pieces, e.g., reflections on teaching Wharton, archival finds, digital scholarship, and other work that might be of interest to our readership.
Each year, we are delighted to offer three awards (Undergraduate Research Essay; Elsa Nettels Award for Beginning Scholar; Archival Research), which support Wharton scholarship tremendously. This year, we are proposing to establish a new award to sustain mid-career research on Wharton. The call for awards will be published in February and the deadline for submissions will be June 30, 2024.
None of the above would have been possible without your contributions and support. Please do take a moment to renew your membership to the Society, which includes a yearly subscription to the Edith Wharton Review and access to previous articles via the Scholarly Publishing Collective.
https://www.psupress.org/journals/jnls_EWR.html
If you can, please consider making a donation. Even a little bit helps these endeavors so much. A few months ago, upon the initiative of the tireless Julie Olin-Ammentorp, we established a fund for the upkeep of Edith Wharton’s and—if funds allow— Walter Berry’s graves. Thank you so much for raising USD 605.02 already! Please consider making a donation to this initiative, so that we can make it happen by the end of this year.
We have a lot to look forward to but also a lot to be thankful for. On my part, I wish to thank the EWS Board for their generosity and support but also YOU for making me feel part of a collegial, rewarding, and exciting community all over the world. I will see you off with a fabulous podcast on The Age of Innocence by Prof. Emily Orlando:
and I hope to see you all at Gary’s talk on Wharton’s birthday next week!
With my warmest wishes,
Myrto—Myrto Drizou
Associate Professor of English
Faculty of Education and Arts
Nord University
Bodø 8026, Norway
The Edith Wharton Society 