As an Allied Organization of the Modern Language Association, the Byron Society of America sponsors one or two Byron sessions at the annual convention of the MLA, held annually in January (previously December) of each year. If you like, read a 40-year history of the BSA at the MLA convention.
MLA 2025: New Orleans
“Transnational Byron”
Session Chair: Piya Pal-Lapinski, Associate Professor of English, Bowling Green State University
Byron’s experiences in Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean, including the global impact of his poetry, position him uniquely as a transnational figure. This panel explores transnational contexts in Byron’s work and discusses the significance of these interventions in an increasingly fractured global scenario which marks the current moment. Offering fresh interpretations of major works, the session focuses on topics such as Byron’s global celebrity; the way The Island frames political revolution in the context of the Columbian, Ecuadorian, and Greek revolts, creating spaces for new ideas related to progressive political communities, asylum and refugee discourse; Don Juan as an epic of child migration which engages with the nightmarish precarity of the migrant situation, from shipwreck and sexual exploitation to slavery; and the way Byron’s translating activity unsettles the idea of a national language/culture, drawing attention to difference and forging new coalitions.
Participants:
Mark Canuel, “Byron’s ‘Infant World,’” Professor of English, University of Illinois, Chicago
Omar Miranda, “Byron’s Global Celebrity,” Associate Professor of English, University of San Francisco
Jonathan Sachs, “Don Juan’s Migrant Children,” Professor of English, Concordia University, Montréal
Maria Schoina, “Byron as Translator,” Associate Professor, School of English, Faculty of Philosophy, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece
Past Conferences:
MLA 2024: Philadelphia, PA
SESSION ONE
Roundtable : “Byron’s Legacy, 200 Years On”
THURSDAY, 4 JANUARY, 1:45 PM-3:00 PM, COMMONWEALTH D (LOEWS)
John Havard (Binghampton University), “Politics”
Ghislaine McDayter (Bucknell University), “Gender and Sexuality”
Matt Sandler (Columbia University), “Race”
Jerome McGann (University of Virginia), “Poetry”
SESSION TWO
“Byron in Circulation”
FRIDAY, 5 JANUARY, 10:15AM-11:30AM. COMMONWEALTH A1 (LOEWS)
Presiding: Lindsey Eckert, Florida State University
Michael Macovski (Georgetown), “The Material Byron: Book History and Textual Studies”
James Armstrong (City College of New York), “Byron and Drama”
Gary Dyer (Cleveland State ), “Byron and Textuality”
This special session marks the bicentennial of Lord Byron’s death with a series of papers considering the contemporary and ongoing circulation of his works as both material texts and intellectual property. The papers consider Byron’s modernity as a function of particular networks of documentary transmission, an ongoing process called forth by his celebrity and the manipulation of his textual record by many agents. Legions of publishers and pirates, readers and collectors, editors and forgers, have shaped the legacy of Byron’s works in ways both trivial and profound. The panel reveals the exceptionally social constitution of the poet’s career, a process enacted primarily through various textual and editorial interventions, which had the effect of distributing Byronism across a wide array of institutions and persons who were not only reading Byron, but writing him as well. Unlike his less-celebrated contemporaries Keats and Shelley, Byron cut a public figure and left an extensive public paper trail; he inspired ventriloquists, conjurers, reanimators, and rewriters as a basic function of his artistic procedures.
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MLA 2023: San Francisco, CA
Session 563: Uncommon Wants, Common Things, Undercommons: Byron in 2023
MLA 2022: Washington, D.C.
Byron’s Stanzas: The 1822 Cantos of Don Juan
Keywords: Byron, Romanticism, British, Nineteenth Century, Poetry
Sponsoring Entity: Byron Society of America
How do we read and teach Byron’s long poems, especially Don Juan, and what reading strategies are most productive and relevant to his work? Panelists center on a discussion of specific stanzas of Byron’s Don Juan, emphasizing the connections among poetics, thematics, and the larger cultural contexts and theoretical concerns of the Romantic era.
Speakers
Celeste G. Langan (U of California, Berkeley)
Deidre Lynch (Harvard U)
Omar F. Miranda (U of San Francisco)
Emily Rohrbach (Durham U)
Mariam Wassif (U of Paris 1, Paris-Sorbonne)
Presiding: Mai-Lin Cheng (U of Oregon)
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MLA 2021 (online)
Byron in 1821: A Retrospective
Sunday, January 10
Omar F. Miranda, Assistant Professor, University of San Francisco, Panel Chair and Organizer
Panelists:
1. “Animality, Natural History, and a Posthumanist Self-Critique in Byron’s Cain”; Rajarshi Banerjee, PhD Candidate, Western University.
2. “1821: Byron’s Repository of Shame”; Marc Gotthardt, PhD Candidate, University of Cambridge.
3. “Marino Faliero and The Two Foscari: Repeopling the Past, Present, and Future”; Peter Manning, Professor, Stony Brook University.
4. “X-Files: Phillis Wheatley, Angelic Aliens, and the Case of Blackness in Cain and Heaven and Earth”; Chris Washington, Assistant Professor, Francis Marion University.
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MLA 2020 (Seattle)
Byron’s Complete Poetical Works at Forty
Saturday, January 11
1:45 – 3:00pm, Washington State Convention Center, Room 204
Presiding: Michelle Nancy Levy, Simon Fraser U
Speakers:
Lindsey Eckert, Florida State U; Alice J. Levin, Hofstra U; Adam McCune, Baylor U; Jonathan Sachs, Concordia U, Montreal; Andrew M. Stauffer, U of Virginia.
MLA 2019 (Chicago)
1819 in 2019
Session # 365: FRIDAY, 4 JANUARY
5:15 PM-6:30 PM
Columbus G (Hyatt Regency Chicago)
Participants will discuss the relevance of 1819 for our contemporary moment, where 1819 refers both to the events of that year and to James Chandler’s foundational work, England in 1819.
Presiding
Jonathan Sachs (Concordia U, Montreal)
Respondent
James Chandler (U of Chicago)
Speakers
Ian Duncan (U of California, Berkeley)
Amanda Jo Goldstein (U of California, Berkeley)
Deidre Lynch (Harvard U)
Josephine McDonagh (U of Chicago)
Jerome J. McGann (U of Virginia)
MLA 2018 (New York City)
Byron & Politics
Session 270: “Byron and Politics: A roundtable discussion”
Friday, 5 January 2018, 10:15 AM-11:30 AM
Presiding: Jack Wasserman, (independent scholar and longstanding Board Member of the BSA)
Roundtable participants:
Jonathan Gross (DePaul)
Piya Pal-Lapinski (Bowling Green State)
Andrew Warren (Harvard)
MLA 2017 (Philadelphia)
Byron and Consumption
Session 201. Presiding: Ghislaine Gaye McDayter, Bucknell Univ.
1. “Consuming Byron in the Age of Abolition,” Deanna Koretsky, Spelman Coll.
2. “Byron’s Works and Public Consumption,” Gary R. Dyer, Cleveland State Univ.
3. “Consumption on the Margins: Byron’s Secondhand Reading,” Jonathan Gross, DePaul Univ.
4. “Consuming Melodrama,” Michael Gamer, Univ. of Pennsylvania
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MLA 2016 (Austin, TX)
BYRON & AMERICA (Panel #311)
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MLA 2015
BYRON NOW
Vancouver, B.C.
Saturday, 10 January, 5:15–6:30 p.m., 112, VCC West
Presiding: Matthew Borushko (Stonehill College)
1. Jerome McGann (University of Virginia), “Lyric Writing in a Byronic Perspective”
2. Evan Gottlieb (Oregon State University), “George Gordon Lord Network”
3. Gary Dyer (Cleveland State University), “Byron’s Posterity”
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MLA 2014
FUTURE DIRECTIONS IN BYRON STUDIES
Saturday, 11 January, 3:30–4:45 p.m., Los Angeles–Miami, Chicago Marriott
Program arranged by the Byron Society of America
Presiding: Halina Adams, Univ. of Delaware, Newark
1. “The Vomit of Memory: Byron’s Letters and Journals as Romanticism’s Aesthetics of Nausea,” Jacob Hughes, Penn State Univ., University Park
2. “Jacobite Echoes and Coterie Dynamics in Byron’s The Island,” Rebecca Nesvet, Univ. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
3. “Toward an Object-Oriented Book History through Don Juan,” Brian Rejack, Illinois State Univ.
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MLA 2013
TEACHING BYRON
Friday 04 January 2013, 8:30 – 9:45am, Liberty B Sheraton (Boston)
Presiding: Robin S. Hammerman, Stevens Institute of Technology
1. Susan Wolfson, Princeton University. “‘Electricity in the Air’: Childe Harold III, Frankenstein, and More.”
2. Charles W. Mahoney, University of Connecticut. “Sortes Byronicae: Don Juan par hasard.”
3. G. Todd Davis, Kentucky State University. “Byron’s Darkness and Student Reception.”
4. Paul Whickman, The University of Nottingham. “Don Juan for First Year Undergraduates.”
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MLA 2012
LORD BYRON: POETRY IN MANUSCRIPT, POETRY IN PRINT
Saturday, 07 January 2012, 5:15 – 6:30 p.m., 616, Washington State Convention Center.
Program arranged by the Byron Society of America
Presiding: Gary R. Dyer, Cleveland State University
1. “Indeterminacy and Method: Editing Byron’s Accidentals,” Alice J. Levine, Hofstra University
2. “Byron’s Social Readers and the Limits of Manuscript,” Michelle Nancy Levy, Simon Fraser University
3. “Byron’s Hand,” Gary R. Dyer, Cleveland State University
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MLA 2011
LORD BYRON: LIVES AND AFTERLIVES
Sunday, January 09, 8:30-9:45 am, Platinum Salon H, Marriott.
Presiding: Cheryl F. Guiliano, University of California, Los Angeles
1. John Clubbe, University of Kentucky. “Byron’s Life as Collector and his Pursuit of an Epic Voice.”
2. Tom Mole, McGill University. “Byron in the Nineteenth-Century Panthenon.”
3. Catherine Siemann, The Cooper Union. “Lord Byron: Vampire.”
CARL WOODRING AND THE RISE OF NEW HISTORICISM
Saturday, January 08, 1:45-3:00 pm, Diamond Salon 1, Marriott.
Presiding: Jonathan Gross, DePaul University
1. Nina Auerbach, University of Pennsylvania. “Carl Woodring, Tactful Truth-teller.”
2. Steven E. Jones, Loyola University. “Politics and Prints in English Romantic Poetry.”
3. Anne K. Mellor, University of California, Los Angeles. “Engendering the Politics of English Romantic Poetry.”
For a full description of these sessions, please click here.
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MLA 2009
BYRON AND THE REVOLUTIONARY SPIRIT
Monday, December 28, 2009
3:30-4:45 p.m.
Philadelphia Marriott
Philadelphia, PA
Presiding:
Paul Douglass, San Jose State University
“Promethean Innovation: Byron’s Lyrics to Augusta”
Charles W. Mahoney, University of Connecticut
“‘A Long Seclusion’: Byron’s Dubious Rebellion from the Lake School”
Madeleine Callaghan, Durham University
“Byron and Irish Nationalism”
Timothy Webb, University of Bristol
“Byron’s ‘modern Greeks’ and Hemans’s Modern Greece: The Revolutionary Poetics of People and Place”
Noah Comet, Ohio State University
“FOUR O’CLOCK FRIENDS”: JOHN MURRAY AND HIS CIRCLE
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
3:30 – 4:45 p.m.
Philadelphia Marriott
Philadelphia, PA
Program arranged by:
the Byron Society of America and Scottish Literature Discussion Group
Presiding:
Fiona J. Wilson, Sarah Lawrence College
“John Murray II”
David McClay, National Library of Scotland
“Byron and Murray”
Hermione B. de Almeida, University of Tulsa
“‘A Feather in Our Cap’: Scott, Murray, and the Founding of the Quarterly Review”
Susan Oliver, University of Salford
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MLA 2008
BYRON AND/AS/IN POPULAR CULTURE I
Saturday, December 27, 2008
3:30-4:45 p.m.
Golden Gate 1, Hilton
San Francisco, CA
Presiding:
Tom Mole, McGill University
“Picturing Celebrity: Byron, West, and LEL”
Susan Wolfson, Princeton University
“The Culture of Comparison: Byron in the Satirist”
Mark L. Shoenfield, Vanderbilt University
“The Sensation of Byron”
Emily Allen, Purdue University, West Lafayette
Dino Franco Felluga, Purdue University, West Lafayette
“BYRON AND/AS/IN POPULAR CULTURE II:
A CONVERSATION WITH BENJAMIN MARKOVITS,
author of Imposture and A Quiet Adjustment”
Sunday, December 28, 2008
3:30-4:45 p.m.
Mason A, Hilton
San Francisco, CA
Presiding:
Peter W. Graham, Virginia Tech
A roundtable discussion about writing literary fiction with author Benjamin Markovits and discussants Jonathan Gross, DePaul University and Katherine Kernberger, Linfield College
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2007 – Byron and America
Saturday, 29 December
10:15 – 11:30 a.m., Columbian, Hyatt Regency Chicago, IL
Presiding: Jonathan Gross, DePaul University
1. “Byron in American Music: From Schoenberg to Goth,” John Clubbe, Professor Emeritus, University of Kentucky
2. “Bryon, Stowe, and Lady Byron Vindicated,” Austin Graham, University of California at Los Angeles
3. “Byron, Hawthorne, and Anglo-American Tourism,” Maureen McCue, University of Glasgow
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