Dear Milton Society of America member,

After a year in which many of us Zoomed from morn to noon, from noon to dewy eve (and to much the same despairing result), here’s hoping that the next academic term brings better things.

MSA Happenings

It was a pleasure to see so many of your square-boxed faces at our Annual Meeting, held virtually this year. There we celebrated Honored Scholars David Quint (2020) and John Hale (2021), as well as the winners of our publication awards (full list here).

By vote of the membership at that meeting, Hao Tianhu has joined the Executive Committee for a three-year term, while Alison Chapman and Brooke Conti have begun one-year terms as Vice President and President, respectively. We are also delighted to announce that the Honored Scholar for 2022 will be Paul Stevens. We hope to meet in person at RSA 2022 in Dublin to fête him and reunite with so many beloved friends.

In other MSA news . . . we’ve moved to a new website! Please add us to your bookmarks, and remember to keep us informed of your publications, awards, and events. Click here to submit any updates.

Member Publications, Talks, Awards, and Activities

1. Mandy Green and Sharihan Al-Akhras (eds.) have just published Women (Re)Writing Milton (Routledge), with chapters by: Allan Drew, Thomas R. Tyrrell, Mandy Green, Reginald A. Wilburn, Angelica Duran, Miklós Péti, Larisa Kocic-Zámbó, Renata Meints Adail, Sharihan Al-Akhras, Shannon Miller, Stephanie Spoto, Roula Maria Dib, Jameela Lares and Kayla M. Schreiber, Wendy Furman-Adams, Farah Karim-Cooper.
2. Jason Rosenblatt‘s John Selden: Scholar, Statesman, Advocate for Milton’s Muse (Oxford UP, July 2021) is available for pre-order. 
3. Gordon Campbell’s Norse America: The Story of a Founding Myth (Oxford UP, June 2021) is available for pre-order.
4. Islam Issa’s Shakespeare and Terrorism (Routledge, September 2021) is available for pre-order.
5. Nigel Smith has earned a 2021–22 Stanford Humanities Center Fellowship for his project  “Literature Crossing Ethnic and Racial Boundaries 1600–1700.”
6. MSA Exec Committee Member John Garrison has been named a 2021 John Simon Guggenheim Fellow. He also received an NEH Summer Stipend Fellowship for his book project “The Pleasures of Memory in Shakespeare’s Sonnets.”
7. MSA Exec Committee Member Hao Tianhu has been awarded the National Humanities and Social Sciences Foundation (China) Grand Project for “The Translation and Study of the Selected Works of John Milton” (19ZDA298), 2019-2025.
8. Marissa Nicosia has received an NEH Summer Stipend Fellowship for her book project “Seasonal Tastes: English Literary and Recipe Culture, 1550-1750.”
9. Raphael Magarik has published “Simile for the Devil: Paradise Regained and the Secularization of Satan” in PMLA 136:2 (March 2021).
10. Islam Issa, along with Nuala Watt, Simon Goldhill, and Suzanne Aspden join Rana Mitter, are guests on the audio-recording “Free Thinking. Milton: Samson Agonistes” BBC Sounds. 7 Apr. 2021. 
11. Gordon Campbell is scheduled to deliver The Annual Distinguished Patrides Lecture on Thursday, 27 May 2021, 5:30 PM London Time. See more information on “Milton’s Anglican Hermit” and register in advance here.

Milton Studies 63:1

The second part of this two-part special issue, Milton Today, is now out. It features:

• Maggie Kilgour, “The Pleasure of Milton”
• MSA Treasurer Lauren Shohet, “Media, Mediation, and Milton’s Eve”
• Paul Stevens, “Nationalism’s Double-Bind: Individualism and the Global Implications of Milton’s Nationalism”
• John Rumrich, “William Empson and C. S. Lewis: The Atonement”
• Elizabeth Sauer, “ ‘Generous Arts and Affaires’: Milton on Labor”
• David A. Harper, “ ‘Fittest to Choose’: Milton Against Celebrity”
• Islam Issa, “Researching Milton in Egypt: Politics, Portraiture, and Pasta”
• Margaret Kean, “Learning to Stand: Paradise Regained Today”
• Katherine Calloway Sueda, “Milton in Science Fiction and Fantasy”

Milton Quarterly 54:3

This newsletter forgot to include a list of publications in the last (October) issue. Apologies! But Milton scholarship is news that stays news. Please check these out if you haven’t already.

Articles:

• David Hawkes and Joe Lockard, “Samson on the Yard: Teaching Samson Agonistes in an Arizona Prison”
• Crawford Gribben, “John Owen’s Milton”
• William Dean Clement, “ ‘The Excess of Glory Obscured’: Behemoth and Anti-Theodicy in Paradise Lost”

Reviews:

• Anna K. Nardo on Alex Garganigo, Samson’s Cords: Imposing Oaths in Milton, Marvell, and Butler (UToronto, 2018)
• Hugh Jenkins on Ryan Hackenbracht, National Reckonings: The Last Judgment and Literature in Milton’s England (Cornell, 2019)
• Thomas N. Corns on George Southcombe, The Culture of Dissent in Restoration England: “The Wonders of the Lord” (Boydell and Brewer, 2019)
• Ryan Hackenbracht on Anthony Milton, ed. The Oxford History of Anglicanism. Vol. 1: Reformation and Identity, c. 1520-1662 (OUP 2017)
• Andrew Wadoski on Stewart Mottram, Ruin and Reformation in Spenser, Shakespeare, and Marvell (OUP 2017)

Calls for Papers, Proposals, Applications 

Call for Papers: The 2022 Conference on John Milton, June 20-22, 2022. St. Louis, Missouri

Papers (not to exceed twenty minutes reading time) are invited on any aspect of Milton studies, from close readings of particular works to broader investigations of themes and trends. The conference will be held on the campus of Saint Louis University, in conjunction with the Symposium on Medieval and Renaissance Studies.

Please submit 250-word abstract, along with a brief academic biography to the SLU Symposium website. Proposals for sessions and round-table discussions are also welcome. Deadline for submissions: December 31, 2021.

Featured speakers: Feisal Mohamed, Yale University; Steven Zwicker, Washington University, St. Louis. Featured event: The John Geraghty Symposium on “Milton and Difference: Race, Gender, and Power”

Sponsored by Saint Louis University and Southern Illinois University, Carbondale.

For more information, please contact Sara van den Berg (sara.vandenberg@slu.edu), Jonathan Sawday (jonathan.sawday@slu.edu), or Ryan Netzley (rnetzley@siu.edu)

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Until next time, friends—

Brooke (b.conti@csuohio.edu)
MSA President