Draft of the program for IPW Durham

[Krafft, John M.]

LINES, LEGACIES, ANNIVERSARIES:
INTERNATIONAL PYNCHON WEEK 2013


Venue: Rosemary Cramp Lecture Theatre, Calman Learning Centre (near
the main library), Durham University.

Supported by the Department of English Studies:

http://www.dur.ac.uk/english.studies/

Conference website:

http://www.ipw2013.com/



DAY ONE (5th August)


8:30-9:45 — registration

9:45-10:00 — opening address


10:00-11:30 — V-LOCATIONS

Clément Lévy (Università degli Studi di Napoli, L’Orientale): ‘Paris for Love?’

Umberto Rossi (independent scholar, Rome): ‘Florence’.

Paolo Simonetti (Università degli Studi di Roma, Tor Vergata): ‘Malta’.

break

11:45-13:15 — RELIGION, SPIRITUALITY, MYTH

Joanna Freer (Sussex University): ‘The Religion and Politics of the
East in Pynchon’s Mason & Dixon’.

Richard Moss (Durham University): ‘Channel Hopping for the Soul:
Mapping the New Age’.

Jennifer Backman (Palomar College): ‘Katabasis, Orpheus, and V.:
Thomas Pynchon’s Obsessive Returns to the Underworld’.

lunch

14:45-16:15 — HISTORY, POLITICS, NATIONHOOD

Thomas Schaub (University of Wisconsin, Madison): ‘Lightning in
America: The Role of Benjamin Franklin in Mason & Dixon’.

Chris Wright (Newcastle University): ‘The Importance of Being British’.

Ericka Wills (Illinois State University): ‘“Who will be left to
remember”: Representations of the Colorado Coalfield War in Pynchon’s
Against the Day’.

break

16:30-18:00 — SOURCES & INTERTEXTS I: FILM

Jeeshan Gazi (University of Essex): ‘Pynchon’s Nineteen Eighty-Four:
Vineland, the Filmic Object and Social Control’.

Paul McCormick (Ohio State University): ‘Belatedness and the Legacy of
Gravity’s Rainbow as an American Cinematic Novel’.

Abeer Fahim (American University of Sharjah): ‘Approaching Pynchon
through Embodiment: Morphing and Doubling in Gravity’s Rainbow’.


DAY TWO (6th August):


9:30-11:00 — SOURCES & INTERTEXTS II: MUSIC

Barry Lewis (University of Sunderland): ‘Three-Minute Takes on
Three-Year Books: Pynchon’s Legacy in Popular Music’.

George Twigg (University of Exeter): ‘“Sell Out With Me Tonight”:
Popular Music, Commericalization and Commodification in Vineland, The
Crying of Lot 49 and V.’.

John Joseph Hess (Harriet L. Wilkes Honors College, Florida Atlantic
University): ‘Music in Mason & Dixon’.

break

11:15-12:45 — SOURCES & INTERTEXTS III: POPULAR / FOLK / COUNTER CULTURE.

Sean Carswell (California State University Channel Islands): ‘A
Ukulele Guide to Contemporary Rebellion’.

Sally E. Parry (Illinois State University): ‘Floating Above History:
The Chums of Chance in Against the Day’.

Jeffrey Severs (University of British Columbia): ‘Pynchon and the 1962
Seattle World’s Fair’.

lunch

14:30-16:00 — RESISTANCE, POWER, TERROR

Robert McLaughlin (Illinois State University): ‘Displacing the
Present: Against the Day, 9/11, Anarchism and Terrorism’.

Michael Maguire (Penn State University): ‘September 11 and Political
Innocence in Against the Day’.

Georgios Maragos (Athens, Greece): ‘“For every They there ought to be
a We”: The (Almost) Equivalence of Power and Resistance in Mason &
Dixon and Against the Day’.

break

16:15-17:45 — PATTERNS & STRATEGIES

David Kipen (Southern California Public Media / Libros Schmibros
Lending Library & Used Bookshop): ‘Hysteron Proteron with a Vengeance:
Did Pynchon Have His Whole Corpus Mapped As of 1963?’

Matthew Cissell (University of the Basque Country): ‘The Author’s
World and the World of the Author’.

Russell Backman (University of California, Davis): ‘The Moderniad:
Thomas Pynchon’s Novels as Contemporary Epic Cycle’.



DAY THREE (7th August):


9:30-11:00 — GENRE, MYSTERY & FRAMING

Kyle Smith (Perth College, University of the Highlands and Islands):
‘“All those feathers and he still can’t fly”: Spies, the albatross of
self and lines of flight in Gravity’s Rainbow’.

Hue-ju Wang (National Chi Nan University, Taiwan): ‘Playing a
“Hard-boiled Private Eye”: Tyrone Slothrop’s Investigation into the
“Slothrop Surveillance”’.

David Letzler (City University of New York): ‘Introducing the
Circumfabulation: On Mason & Dixon and Genre’.

break

11:15-12:45 — SPATIALITY & TEMPORALITY

Arkadiusz Misztal (Gdańsk University): ‘Reading Pynchon’s Book of
Hours: Narrative Chronometrics and “mythical hours” in Gravity’s
Rainbow’.

James Gourley (University of Western Sydney): ‘Temporal Torsion:
Theories of Time in V. and Against the Day’.

Michael Harris (Penn State University): ‘Thomas Pynchon: Artist of the
Particular’.

lunch

14:30-16:00 — EPISTEMOLOGY, ONTOLOGY, POSTMODERNISM

Ali Chetwynd (University of Michigan): ‘The Imperative Dimensions of
Co-existent Worlds, from V. to Against the Day’.

Simon de Bourcier (University of East Anglia): ‘Reading McHale reading
Pynchon, or, is Pynchon still a postmodernist?’

Kathryn Hume (Penn State University): ‘Attenuated Realities: Pynchon’s
Trajectory from V. to Inherent Vice’.

break

16:15-17:45 — BODIES, MATTER, SPECTRALITY

Zachary Rowlinson (Sussex University), ‘“nostrils a-flare with some
last twinkling of geniality”: Towards an Olfactory Pynchon’.

Tiina Käkelä-Puumala (University of Helsinki), ‘Ghosts in Against the Day’.

Zofia Kolbuszewska (John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin),
‘American Golem(s), sentient matter and automata in Mason & Dixon’.

Evening: Wine reception in St John’s College, details tbc.

DAY FOUR (8th August):


9:30-11:00 — SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY I: PERSPECTIVES, CODES & ANXIETIES

Xavier Marcó del Pont (Royal Holloway, University of London): ‘“Ever
scrutinizing from above”: Reading Pynchon’s aerial views’.

Katie R. Muth (University of St Andrews): ‘Sferics and Cyphers:
Pynchon’s Codes and the History of Informatics’.

Grace Halden (Birkbeck, University of London): ‘The dominance of
technology in Gravity’s Rainbow: the light bulb and the cybernetic
apocalypse’.

break

11:15-12:45 — SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY II: FORCES, PHYSICS, MATHS

Nina Engelhardt (Edinburgh University): ‘Destroying the Poetry of the
Rainbow? Newton and the Fictitious Force Gravity in Gravity’s
Rainbow’.

Robert Tindol (Guangdong University of Foreign Studies): ‘Mason &
Dixon and Quantum Chromodynamics’.

Michael Harris (Institut de Mathématiques de Jussieu): ‘Images of Mathematics’.

lunch

14:30-16:00 — THEORY & PHILOSOPHY

Sebastian Huber (Ludwig Maximillian University, Munich): ‘“It has
happened before but there is nothing to compare it to now”: Evental
Continuity and Rupture in Gravity’s Rainbow and Against the Day’.

Gary Thompson (Saginaw Valley State University): ‘Pynchon and Liminality’.

Petrus van Ewijk (Antwerp, Belgium): ‘The disappearing protagonist:
Tyrone Slothrop in Gravity’s Rainbow, Wyatt Gwyon in William Gaddis’s
The Recognitions, Hal Incandenza in David Foster Wallace’s Infinite
Jest and William F. Kohler in William Gass’s The Tunnel’.

break

16:15-17:45 — AUTHORSHIP, PUBLISHING & EDITING

Foteini Dimirouli (Oxford University): ‘“They hide, you seek”: The
Elusive Author of Slow Learner’.

Tore Rye Andersen (Aarhus University): ‘Blurbing Pynchon’.

Terry Reilly (University of Alaska, Fairbanks) and Gilles Chamerois
(Université de Bretagne Occidentale):  ‘“A minor adjustment or two”:
Revisions to the Proofs of Against the Day’.

closing remarks