Scholarly Research
American Literature Association Conferences
The Jonathan Bayliss Society is a member of the American Literature Association and participates in one or more panels during the annual ALA conference, which takes place during the Memorial Day weekend. The 2027 conference will be held in Boston May 26-29, 2027.
ALA May 2027
The Jonathan Bayliss Society invites proposals for two roundtables at the ALA in 2027.
Roundtable 1: Historiography in American Literature
For Hayden White, “specifically ‘fictive’ elements” are foundational to all narrative historiography, and narrative historiography shares fundamental similarities with fiction and myth. In some fiction, history functions as background to fictional characters and plots. But can fiction, poetry, or drama function historiographically, i.e., can literature explain the past, or challenge existing historiographic explanations? In what ways are texts like Shaara’s The Killer Angels, Bayliss’s Gloucesterbook, Vollman’s The Dying Grass, Miller’s The Crucible, Olson’s Maximus Poems, or Forché’s The Angel of History works of historiography as well as works of literature?
Please submit abstract of no more than 250 words along with your academic affiliation (if any) and a brief biographical note to Gary Grieve-Carlson at grieveca@lvc.edu by January 25, 2027.
Roundtable 2: Ritual in American Literature
Powerful scenes of ritual in American literature include the Black Mass in Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown,” Ahab’s diabolical consecration of the harpoons in Moby-Dick, Father Duncannon’s revision of the Anglican mass in Bayliss’s Gloucesterbook, or the confirmation scene in Baldwin’s Go Tell It on the Mountain. More broadly construed, rituals may be domestic, institutional, or social, as well as religious: weddings, rites of passage, graduations, inductions, funerals, initiations, invocations …. How does American literature imagine the significance of ritual? Is ritual imagined as efficacious, and if so, how? If ritual holds power, what is that power’s source? Or is ritual presented as a meaningless relic of a superstitious past, something to be striven against and overcome?
Please submit abstract of no more than 250 words along with your academic affiliation (if any) and a brief biographical note to Gary Grieve-Carlson at grieveca@lvc.edu by January 25, 2027.
Conference and hotel details are available at https://americanliteratureassociation.org/ala-conferences/ala-annual-conference/.
ALA May 2025
In 2025 at the Boston conference, the JBS roundtable was "American Experimental Fiction," chaired by JBS Board member John T. Day. Board member Gary Grieve-Carlson's talk was on "Systems in the Novels of Jonathan Bayliss"; the panel included talks on other authors by Karen Frances McCarthy, Nick Salvo, and Izaak Hecht. A joint JBS-Charles Olson Society panel, "Charles Olson, Vincent Ferrini, and Jonathan Bayliss in Gloucester: Poetry, Prose, and Place," was chaired by the Olson Society's Josh Hoeynck. Grieve-Carlson's paper was “The Idea of Tragedy in Jonathan Bayliss’ Prologos”; other panelists were Jim Cocola, Ben Lee, and Katherin Yu.
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Bayliss Papers
Harvard's Houghton Library is the primary repository for Bayliss's papers. The Bancroft Library at the University of California contains letters from Bayliss to Professor Benjamin Lehman.
Bayliss Society Notebook
JBS members receive the Bayliss Society Notebook twice a year. The Notebook usually includes short scholarly articles, previously unpublished Bayliss work, and organizational updates. Submissions are welcome and may be emailed to info@jonathanbayliss.org.