William Dow presented his paper, “This Certain Conjunction: Gender and Class in American Culture” for the seminar Crossing Borders: Gender and Class in American Culture, which took place at the University of  Valenciennes on April 25. Alice Craven and William Dow co-organized The Richard Wright Centennial Conference held at AUP 19-21 June. The largest conference ever sponsored by the Department of  Comparative Literature and English, it brought together over 120 Wright scholars, as well as poets, novelists, filmmakers, actors, sociologists, and political activists. It featured such plenary speakers as Julia Wright, daughter of  Richard Wright, celebrated writer John Edgar Widemen, cultural historian Paula Rabinowitz, and leading Wright scholars Houston Baker and Joyce Ann Joyce. It also received extensive press coverage from The Philadelphia Tribune and is now serving as the base for an internationally distributed Richard Wright Podcast and photo exhibit. Plans are underway to publish the selected proceedings. In September William Dow was appointed to the position of Professeur des Universités at Paris Est Marne-la-Vallée. 

William Dow has published articles in the fields of American nineteenth-century literature and American twentieth-century fiction, in such journals as Publications of the Modern Language Association, The Emily Dickinson Journal, Twentieth-Century Literature, ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance, Critique, The Hemingway Review, MELUS, Revue Française D'Etudes Américaines, Actes Sud, Profils américains, and Annales du Monde. His teaching interests include the American proletarian novel, American inter-war Modernists, and American cultural history. He is the Managing Editor of Literary Journalism Studies and the author of the forthcoming book Narrating Class in American Fiction.

  Editorships

General Editor of American Nostalgias, Paris: Mallard, 2002.

  Publications

“Meridel Le Sueur’s Working-Class Fiction: Moving to a Cultured Sense of Language.” A Class of Our Own: Teaching the Literature of the Working Class. eds. Laura Hapke and Lisa A. Kirby. Cambridge Scholars Press, 2007: 59-72

“‘Hard Work and Blood’ in Whitman’s 1855 Song of Myself.” Spell (Swiss Papers in Language and Literature), Vol. 18. American Poetry: Whitman to the Present. Eds. Robert Rehder and Patrick Vincent. Zurich: Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen, 2006: 35-52.

“A Modernist Vernacular: Violent Figurations in Nathanael West’s Miss Lonelyhearts.” Polysèmes Arts et littératures: les figures de la violence. Paris: Publibook, Vol. 7, 2005 : 185-201.

“The Perils of Irony in Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises.”  Etudes Anglaises (Paris IV, Sorbonne). Vol. 52, No. 8, 2005: 178-192.  

“Meridel Le Sueur’s Salute to Spring: ‘A Movement Up Which All Are Moving’.” Core: A Journal of the Humanities. Paris: The American University of Paris. Vol. 3, No. 1, 2004: 79-96.

“‘Agents of Change’: Challenges in the Flesh and the Teaching of American Literature.” The Periphery: Viewing the World. Athens: The National and Kapodistrain University of Athens, 2004: 150-157.

“La matière désert: Death Comes for the Archbishop de Willa Cather et Blood Meridian de Cormac McCarthy.” Confluences. Déserts: entre désir et délire. University of  Nanterre X: Publidix, Vol. 22, 2003: 155-173.

“Writing Nostalgia, Writing a Nation.” Introduction. American Nostalgias. Angloscopies. General Editor, William Dow. Paris: Editions Mallard, 2003: 16-23.

“Performative Passages: Davis’s Life in the Iron Mills, Crane’s Maggie, Norris’s McTeague.”  Twisted From the Ordinary: Essays on American Literary Naturalism. Tennessee Studies in Literature. Ed. Mary E. Papke. Knoxville: University of  Tennessee Press, 2003: 23-44.

“‘Always Your Heart’: The ‘Great Design’ of Toomer’s Cane.” Melus. Vol. 27, No. 4, Winter 2002: 59-88.

“Down and Out in London and Orwell.” Symbiosis: A Journal of Anglo-American Literary Relations. Vol. 6, No. 1, April 2002: 69-94.

“Lives on the Boundary: Portraiture and Modernism in Jean Toomer’s Cane and Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio.” Literature on the Move: Comparing Diasporic Ethnicities in Europe and the Americas. Heidleburg: Universitaetsuerlag C. Winter, 2002: 248-258.

“Thème Oral.” Rapports de Jurys de Concours. Agrégation Anglais: concours interne, 2001. Ministère de l’Education Nationale. Tours: Centre National de documentation Pédagogique, 2001: 104-117.

“Nostalgia and the Insurrectionary in Dos Passos’s U.S.A.” “Variations

sur le thème de l’Etrangeté.” Annales du Monde. No. 11, 2000. Paris: L’Harmattan. Sorbonne nouvelle (Université Paris III): 171-188. 

“Topographical Strides of Thoreau: The Poet and Pioneer in Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian.”  Revue Française D’Etudes Américaines. No. 84, March, 2000: 89-105.

“Performative Realism in Crane’s Maggie and Norris’s McTeague.” Les Avatars du Réalisme. Nantes and Paris: Ouest Editions, 2000: 243-258.

“Willa Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop: ‘To Become a Story’.” Editions du Temps. September, 1999: 41-55.

“Storytelling and Unforeseen Becomings in Raymond Carver’s Shortcuts.” Ellipses. September, 1999: 78-87.

“PMLA Abroad: Brief  Ponderings on (Mistaken) Identities.” Publication of the Modern Language Association. Vol. 113, No. 5, October, 1998: 1136-1137.

“French Responses to Dickinson.” An Emily Dickinson Encyclopedia, Ed. Jane Donahue Eberwein. Greenwood Press, 1998: 118-119.

“Paul Auster’s The Invention of Solitude: Glimmers in a Reach to Authenticity.” Critique. Vol. 39, No. 3, Spring, 1998: 272-281.

“Jean Toomer’s Cane and Winesburg, Ohio: Literary Portraits from the ‘Grotesque Storm Center’.” Qwerty. December, 1997: 129-136.

“‘Always Your Heart’: Direct Address, Narrative Authority, and the ‘Great Design’ of Cane.” Ellipses. October, 1997: 43-52.

“Imagination and the Disruptive Complicities of Emily Dickinson and William Carlos Williams.” Profils américains. No. 8, 1997: 81-99.

“Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms.” Explicator. Vol. 55, No. 4, Summer, 1997: 224-225.

“The Nature of Huckleberry Finn: Huck as ‘Autobiographer.’” Americana, University of the Sorbonne Press. Vol. 14, January, 1997: 30-43.

“John Dos Passos, Blaise Cendrars, and the ‘Other’ Modernism.” Twentieth Century Literature. Vol. 42, No. 3, Fall, 1996: 396-415.

“Fiction is Not Real: the Performative and Norris’s McTeague.” ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance. Vol. 42, No. 2, 1996: 77-92.

“Elle signe souvent ‘Emilie’: Emily Dickinson and the French Critical Reception.” The Emily Dickinson Journal. Vol. 5, No. 2, 1996: 226-231.

“Never Being ‘This Far From Home’: Paul Auster and Picturing Moonlight Spaces.” Qwerty. Vol. 6, December, 1996: 193-198.

“Paul Auster’s Moon Palace: Story as Ontology, the Moon as the Future.” Ellipses. October, 1996: 55-62.

“Frank Norris and the ‘Realism that Stultifies’.” Excavatio. Vol. VIII, Spring, 1996: 86-99.

“‘The Mirror You Break Your Nose Against’: Lolita and the Conquest of Crime.” Americana, University of the Sorbonne Press. Vol. 13, February, 1996: 55-62.

“L’invention de la solitude de Paul Auster: Lueurs dans l’appréhension de l’authenticité.” Actes Sud, Revue Littéraire. L’oeuvre de Paul Auster: Approches et lectures plurielles. December, 1995: 38-50.

“A Farewell to Arms and Hemingway’s Protest Stance: To Tell the Truth Without Screaming.” The Hemingway Review. Vol. 16, No. 3, Fall, 1995: 38-50.

“Report from the Other Academy: Non-American Voices and American Literature.” Revue Française D’Etudes Américaines. No. 65, July, 1995: 484-495.

“John Dos Passos, Blaise Cendrars, and ‘a Squirrel Cage of the Meridians’.” Notes on Contemporary Literature. Vol. 25, No. 2, March, 1995: 4-5.

“The Influence of Madame Bovary in Kate Chopin’s The Awakening: Corresponding Struggles, Dreams, and Regressions.” Americana, University of the Sorbonne Press, Vol. 11, January, 1994: 11-22.

“Blaise Cendrars and John Dos Passos.” Feuilles de routes: Blaise Cendrars International Society. Paris: Vol. 28, May, 1993: 9-16.

“John Dos Passos: Teaching the Language to Non-Americans.” London: Rodopi, November 17, 1992: 3-14.

  Recent Conferences

“Willa Cather’s ‘Guided Friends’: Death Comes for the Archbishop.” 11^th International Willa Cather Seminar. University of Paris 3-Sorbonne/Tarascon. June 24-July 1, 2007.

“Can Film be Literary Journalism?” Panel Moderator. Literary Journalism in an International Context. The 2^nd International Conference for Literary Journalism Studies. Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris (Science Po), Paris. May 18-19, 2007.

“Writing Dark Times: Settings, Immersions in Agnes Smedley and Meridel Le Sueur.” Literary Journalism in an International Context. The 2^nd International Conference for Literary Journalism Studies. Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris (Science Po), Paris. May 18-19, 2007.

“The Continuum of Class.” Form and Discontentment: Representing Class in American Culture, Literature, and Film. Co-director: William Dow. The University of  Valenciennes. April 6, 2007.

“James Agee’s Engagement Beyond Borders.” Intellectuals and Commitment in the United States (Ecriture et engagement aux Etats-Unis, 1918-1939). University of Paris 13. November 30-December 1, 2006.

“Documentary Forms and Testimonies of Poverty.” First International Conference on Literary Journalism. Celebrating The Jungle: A Century of Literary Journalism throughout the World. The University of Nancy. May 19-20, 2006.

“By Word of  Body: The Social Life of Aesthetic Forms.”  Faire Corps. University of Lille. January 20, 2006.

“Nostalgia and Estrangement in American Depression-era Fiction.” Challenges of Estrangement in a United Europe Confronting the World. 29^th IMISE Conference.

The American University of Paris, July 4-9, 2005. 

“‘Hard Work and Blood’ in Whitman’s 1855 Song of Myself.”  American Poetry: Whitman to the Present. The Swiss Association of North American Studies. Fribourg, Switzerland, November 12-13, 2004.

“American Fiction Today: Realism, Comedy and Beyond.” Panel Discussion. Invited participant. UNESCO in cooperation with the National Endowment of the Arts. Hotel Tallyrand, the American Embassy in France. Oct. 15, 2004.  

“Introduction, James T. Farrell: ‘Looking from the Altar Light’.” James T. Farrell Centennial Conference. Co-organizers: Marshall Brooks and William Dow. The American University of Paris. June 17-19, 2004.

“Jack London’s Problem Bodies.” Jack London Society Seventh Biennial Symposium. Santa Rosa, California. May 23-26, 2004.

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