Thursday, October 1, 2020
7:00-9:00 pm EDT
Kickoff Reading:

• ​Featured Poets: Henri Cole, Rosebud Ben-Oni, Joyelle McSweeney, and Kazim Ali
• Wanda Coleman Tribute by Terrance Hayes

Friday, October 2, 2020
9:30-11:00 am EDT
Panel A
In the Beginning(s):

• "The Rising Poems of America: Nationalistic Origins of the American Sonnet," Benjamin Crawford
• "Origins of Rupture: Ralph Waldo Emerson's 'Woods, A Prose Sonnet,'" John James
• "Anne Bradstreet and the Prehistory of the American Sonnet," Roger Wei-chen Liu
• "The Sonnet in British North American Printed Matter Before 1800," Heather H. Yeung
• Moderated by William Camponovo

Panel B
Cross-cultural, International, Contrapuntal:

• "A Plummy Sonnet by Mani Leyb," Jordan Finkin
• "Claude McKay’s Lonely Planet," Walt Hunter​
• "Dissident Sonnets: The Contrapuntal Formalisms of McDougall and Jess," Marlo Starr
• "Cross-Cultural Sonnets in Henri Cole’s Middle Earth," Yuki Tanaka
• Moderated by Deirdre Danklin

1:00-2:30 pm EDT
Panel A
Early-to-Mid 20th Century Sounds:

• "John Wheelwright, Radio, and the Sonnet’s New Deal," Matthew Kilbane 
• "Modern Sonnet and the Plain Style," Melih Levi
• "Two Cathedrals: Wallace Stevens and George Santayana's Sonnet Exchange," Kelly MacPhail
•  "Time for feminism: Sylvia Plath's conceptions of gender and time," Maximillien Vis
• "Anthony Hecht’s Barren Places: 'The Feast of Stephen' and the American Sonnet," David Yezzi
• Moderated by Mary Jo Salter

Panel B
Influence, Confluence, Exchange:

• "'That time of year' for Toomer and Shakespeare," Jennifer Clarvoe
• "Henri Cole’s Sonnet Sequences," Richie Hofmann
• ​“From the me to the you”: Margaret Walker’s Interpersonal Politics," Ariel Martino
• "The Sonnet as Conversation: Experiments in Collaboration," Simone Muench and Jackie K. White
• "Radical Sonnets in African-American Literature," Jennifer Ryan-Bryant
• Moderated by Armen Davoudian

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3:30-5:00 pm EDT
Panel A
Constraint and Embodiment:

• "Jones Very’s Sonnet Manuscripts: ​Prayer and the Embodiment of Form," Clark Davis
• "Deafing the Sonnet: "John Donne as Adaptive Device," Meg Day 
• "Playset: The Sonnet as Enabling Constraint," Anna Maria Hong 
• "Sonnets and/as Boxes: Considering the Structural Possibilities of Ken Taylor’s Self-Portrait as Joseph Cornell," Nate Mickelson
• Moderated by Shangrila Willy

Panel B
Short and Long of It:

• "'This resonant, strange, vaulting roof': Contemporary Sonnets Beyond Iambic Pentameter," Anna Lena Phillips Bell
• "Standing in One Place to Move: Repetition as Disruption and Expansion of the Sonnet," Rebecca Morgan Frank 
• "Kay Ryan’s Eerie Frivolity," Diana Leca
• "'You Cannot Rest': Bidart, Lowell, Bishop and the Sonnet," Meg Tyler 
• "Partial Visibility: Short-Lined Sonnets," Lesley Wheeler
• Moderated by Samuel Cheney

7:00-9:00 pm EDT
Keynote Event:

• Keynote Speaker: Jahan Ramazani: "Self-Metaphorizing 'American' Sonnets"
• Featured Poets: Tacey M. Atsitty, Philip Metres, and Kiki Petrosino 

Saturday, October 3, 2020
9:30-11:00 am EDT
Panel A
At/As Home:

• "The Appalachian Sonnet: Maggie Anderson and her Poetic Labor," Jodie Childers
• "Broken Homes and Broken Hearts: The Desolation of the American Sonnet," Stephen Regan
• "'But could a dream send up:' Confinement and Escape in Gwendolyn Brooks's Domestic Sonnets," Tess Taylor
• "Windows, Vistas, and Interiors in the Sonnets of Tuckerman and Millay," Jeff Westover
• Moderated by James Arthur

Panel B
Queering the Sonnet/Querying Queer: 

• "Subverting the Tradition in The Tradition: Jericho Brown’s Reconceptualization of the Sonnet," Michael Dumanis
• "Can a sonnet be Queer? On the Tension Between Queering Form, Essentialism and Normativity," Anthony Moll
• "Audre Lorde's Sonnet Primal Scene," Lisa Moore
• "The Sonnet As: Neuroqueerness in the American Sonnet," Nathan Spoon
• "The Queer Sonnet in America," Brian Teare
• Moderated by Gabriella Fee

1:00-2:30 pm EDT
Panel A
Code and Close Reading:

• "Meter and Gender Politics ​in the American Meta-Sonnet," Annie Finch
• "The Resistant Strain: Notes on the Nonnet," Kevin McFadden
• ​"On Shapes and Echoes That Are Never Done: A Sonnet’s Emergence of Fighting Forms," Mark Olival-Bartley
• "Strange Voltas," Michael Theune
• "African-American Esoteric Sonnets: An Interruption of Afro-Modernism," Jon Woodson
• ​Moderated by Jane Lewty

Panel B 
Innovation, Intimacy, Affect: 

• "Eulogizing a Generation in Elizabeth Alexander’s 'When,'” Abdul Ali
• "The Territorial Imagination: ​Black Arts and the Sonnet," Timo Müller
• "Helene Johnson’s African (and) American Sonnets," Eleanor Wakefield
• "‘Don’t Call Us Dead’: Marilyn Nelson, Danez Smith, and the Contemporary Sonnet-Ballad," L. Lamar Wilson
• Moderated by Jalen Eutsey

​3:30-5:00 pm EDT
Panel A
Inverted, Grotesque, Apocalyptic, Fantastical:

• "‘Silence Is One Part of Speech’: Apocalypse in the American Sonnet from Poe to Dungy," Eleanor Boudreau
• "Pulp Sonnets: American Fantasy and Escape," Stephanie Childress 
• "E.E. Cummings: The Iconic Meta-Sonnet and the Cultural Emblem of the American 'Eye/i,'" Gillian Huang-Tiller 
• "'Flowers Flung to the Offal-Heap': Sensuous Waste in the Sonnets of Frederick Goddard Tuckerman," Zoë Pollak
• Moderated by Beth Caruso

​Panel B
Dialect, Dialectics, and Discourse:

• "Subversive Protest in Paul Laurence Dunbar and Claude McKay’s Sonnets," Donna Denizé and Amanda Mehsima Licato
• "Analogous Indirect Messages of Opportunity: Claude McKay’s Outcry Adjoining Countee Cullen’s Inquiry," Karyn L Hixson
• "Wrestling with the Language: Dialect and Form in Paul Laurence Dunbar," Hollis Robbins
• ["“The Negro’s Tragedy…Binds Me Like a Heavy Iron Chain”: Claude McKay’s Reinvention of the Sonnet Form as Space ​for Sociopolitical Discourse and Ideological Critique," Christopher Allen Varlack] canceled
• ​Moderated by Helena Chung

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7:00-9:00 pm EDT
Keynote Event:

• Keynote Speaker: Carl Phillips: “Whose Sonnet? A Transgression”
  
• Featured Poets: Shane McCrae, Diane Seuss, and Patricia Smith