The Susan Glaspell Society
The American
Literature Association 20th Annual Conference
May 21-24 2009,
The
Susan Glaspell Society is pleased to join the Eugene O'Neill
Society, the Thornton Wilder Society, the Arthur Miller
Society, and the American Theater and Drama Society in
sharing the general thematic topic "Adaptations" at ALA
2009.
"Challenging Generic
Boundaries:
Susan Glaspell's Adaptations"
Chaired by Martha C. Carpentier
In
addition to welcoming papers discussing film adaptations of
Susan Glaspell's work (can anybody find Paramount
Pictures1931 The Right to Love with screenplay by Zoe Akins?), this panel invites
discussions of Glaspell's own adaptations.
While producing eleven innovative plays for the
Provincetown Players from 1916 to 1922, Glaspell continued
to publish short stories in magazines such as
Harpers Monthly
as well as producing a third critically acclaimed novel, and
her increasingly sophisticated fiction showed the impact of
her playwriting success.
Throughout Glaspell's four-decade writing career she
was a consistent adapter of her own work: themes,
narratives, and characters that engrossed her appear and
reappear, transformed, in both the genres she excelled in.
This panel asks contributors to analyze how Glaspell
tests generic boundaries as she adapts similar content to
the different demands and different possibilities offered by
drama and fiction.
Works that might be considered are: her most famous
play Trifles and
its short-story version "A Jury of Her Peers"; her 1917 play
Close the Book and
1916 story "Unveiling Brenda"; her lyrical 1917 one-act
The Outside with
"A Rose in the Sand" written ten years later; either of her
1921 full-length plays
Inheritors or The
Verge with the 1919 story "Pollen"; her final play for
the Provincetown,
Chains of Dew, and 1931 novel
Ambrose Holt and
Family, etc.
The Society also presented a