National and Global
From Rome to New Orleans - Translating the City: The Jesuit Missionaries and Their Participation in the Construction of Urban Fabrics View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Frederic Conrod
When the Society of Jesus was founded in 1540 by Ignatius of Loyola and his fellow students outside of Paris, the expedition of De Soto was on its way to discover the site of the future city of New Orleans, Louisiana, two years later. This research analyzes the Jesuit presence and participation in the construction of the southern metropolis, between French and Spanish rules, and takes a particular look at the correspondence travelling between the Eternal City and the Crescent City.
Russian Medievalism and the Modern Nation: Paradoxes and Contradictions View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Michael Makin
Although Russian medievalism has often been employed in the service of a modern national (and even nationalist) discourse, not least by the Russian state itself, its sources in cultures that predate the modern nation-state and, in some cases, are outside the ethnic orbit of the East Slavs, has often rendered it paradoxically anti-national. For every government-inspired creation -- from the "Byzantine-style" Church of Christ the Savior in nineteenth-century Moscow to the current Patriarch's militaristic "Prayer for Holy Rus'" (in Church Slavonic) during the Russian invasion of Ukraine -- there are counter-examples that undermine official discourse, from Leskov's medievalist versions of hagiographies, that employ Church Slavonic in the service of a radical revision of Eastern Christianity and bypass the East Slavs altogether, to Vodolazkin's 2012 *Laurus*, that emphasizes the interconnected, boundary-crossing nature of the recreated medieval world of the novel. This paper examines the competing narratives of Russian medievalism and their paradoxical cultural products.
Unmerited Literary Awarding Practices: Declining Purse Sizes Among U.S. Major Literary Awards
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Sean Pessin
Literary prize purchasing power is inversely correlated with racial and gender diversity among prize recipients. Literary prizes can be seen as an indicator of institutional achievement in the United States, and the amount of money awarded is considered a proxy for level of achievement; the larger the prize cash-value, the more important the prize. By tracking prize values in the dataset assembled by Spahr, Grossman, and Young ("Index of Major Literary Prizes in the US," 2022) and comparing recent award issuances with the inflation-adjusted values of the initial award values from their first issuance, inferences about award value decline are possible. The trend for major prizes is a gradual decline in adjusted value for awards such as the Whiting Award, Pulitzer Prize, and USA Fellowship, with some awards, such as MacArthur Genius Grants declining most steeply, though for other conflating factors. This is negatively correlated with the trend that these prizes increasingly recognize more diverse fields of awardees. The fact that as the field of literary prize winners is diversifying as the value of the major prizes is decreasing suggests that more funding of literary prizes is needed to produce equitable awarding practices at these elite institutions.
