Dear Milton Society of America member,
As the world—perhaps—returns to normal, we’re grateful for our far-flung community, whose collegiality has been so sustaining throughout the pandemic. For the coming year, this newsletter will be co-produced by Alison (incoming president) and Brooke (former president); please bear with us through any scheduling or technical difficulties!
MSA Happenings
1. 2022 Annual Dinner & Meeting
It was a pleasure to see so many familiar faces on Zoom for the second online iteration of our annual “banquet,” where we heard Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin read her original poem “He Hears Music on the Mountaintop” and an address by this year’s Honored Scholar, Paul Stevens.
We also celebrated this year’s award winners:
- James Holly Hanford Book Award: Nicholas McDowell, The Making of John Milton: Poet of Revolution (Princeton University Press, 2020)
- James Holly Hanford Article Award:
- Winner: Philippa Earle, “‘Till Body Up to Spirit Work’: Maimonidean Prophecy and Monistic Sublimation in Paradise Regained,” Milton Studies 62.1 (2020).
- Honorable Mention: Beatrice Bradley, “Creative Juices: Sweat in Paradise Lost,” Milton Studies 62.1 (2020)
For those who missed it, the booklet can be found here. We hope to gather in person next year at RSA in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
2. Milton Society of America First Book Assistance (MSA FBA) Program
Beginning in 2014, the Milton Society of America provides annually a single $500 reimbursement to support the publication of an outstanding first book devoted substantially to John Milton. The prize recognizes the originality, scope, and scholarly rigor of the book chosen. Applicants must belong to the Milton Society of America. Applicants need not hold the Ph.D.; those who do must have completed their Ph.D.s no longer than six years prior to applying.
The reimbursement may be used to offset costs from the press associated with copy-editing; preparation of an index; permissions for photographs, artwork, and the like; color reproductions; and preparation of graphs and maps. Ineligible expenses include computer and other equipment, travel, and income replacement. The reimbursement is intended to aid scholars undertaking an original, first-time, book-length work in Milton studies. No anthologies, chapters, essays, edited collections, etc., will be considered for this funding.
The application consists of
- A cover letter indicating that the applicant has a completed manuscript
- A provisional or final contract
- An abstract of the book,
- A sample chapter
The successful applicant will be required to
- send to the MSA Treasurer a) a completed MSA FBA Form and b) an invoice or invoices from the press for costs incurred during the application year and/or the subsequent year — for this year’s program, either 2022 or 2023.
- acknowledge the support of “the Milton Society of America First Book Assistance Program” in the publication.
Applications should be sent by June 1 of the year in which the grant will be awarded to the MSA Secretary, Eric Song (esong1@swarthmore.edu). Applicants will be notified by November 1.
3. Member Updates
Please remember to keep us informed of your publications, awards, and events! Click here to submit any updates for inclusion in the newsletter, or just email us directly at one of the addresses below.
Passages
1. Bitter constraint and sad occasion dear . . .
Charley Durham and Kris Pruitt passed along the sad news of the death of John Ulreich of the University of Arizona.
John will be familiar to MSA members as the author of many articles on Milton. Born in 1941, in Brooklyn NY, John received his BA in English (magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa) from Hamilton College in 1963 and attended Harvard University on a Woodrow Wilson Scholarship, receiving his PhD in 1969. He taught first at Hamilton College and then at the University of Arizona, where he taught for 45 years. In 1998, John instituted the Milton Marathon at the UA. It was a yearly 12-hour event during which participants took turns reading Milton’s Paradise Lost.
Gifts in memory of John can be sent to: Tucson Audubon Society, PO Box 91770, Tucson, AZ 85752.
2. Career changes
Reginald A. Wilburn has joined Texas Christian University as the Dean for the School of Interdisciplinary Studies. Congratulations, Reggie!
Member Publications, Talks, Awards, and Activities
This quarter brings us a wealth of new work on Milton, including
1. Milton Studies 64:1 (March 2022)
- John K. Hale, “The View from De Doctrina Christiana”
- Deni Kasa, “Education, Political Theology, and Anti-Trinitarianism in Paradise Lost”
- Daniel Robinson, “The Etymological Demon in Love”
- Edward C. Jacobs, “Death the Devourer: The Sound and Sight of Ate and Eat in Paradise Lost”
- Aaron P. Cassidy, “Paradiastole, Lost and Regained”
2. Milton Quarterly 55:2 (May 2021)
- Articles
- Jason A. Kerr, “Eve’s Church”
- MSA Executive Board member Tianhu Hao, “The Teaching of Milton in the Republic of China (1912-49)
- William Poole and Alexandra Plane, “ ‘Villainously Curtail’d’: John Milton, Joseph Jacob, and the 1689 Pro Populo Adversus Tyrannos
- Reviews
- N. H. Keeble on incoming MSA President Alison A. Chapman’s Courts, Jurisdictions and Law in John Milton and His Contemporaries
- Todd Butler on Timothy Raylor’s Philosophy, Rhetoric and Thomas Hobbes
- Mark Goldie on Rachel Hammersley’s James Harrington: An Intellectual Biography
- John Coffey on Matthew Jenkinson’s Charles I’s Killers in America: The Lives and Afterlives of Edward Whalley and William Goffe
- Miscellaneous Notes and News
- Angelica Duran, “Sweet Societies: The Milton Society of America, April 2020-21”
Other good news from members includes the following:
1. The Milton Society of Georgia is pleased to introduce the Premier Issue of the Caucasus Journal of Milton Studies. Editors Edward and Danna Raupp write:
“We give our warmest thanks to the contributors for their work and to the reviewers who offered positive suggestions. Our thanks go also to Dr. Sathiya Priya of Ausom Digital Solutions, without whose technical expertise this project could not have been accomplished. We are already collecting material for the spring edition and hope that reading the Journal may spur our readers to contribute. We invite you to enjoy our initial efforts, and we will sincerely welcome your comments and recommendations as we go forward.”
2. Brooke Conti has been awarded an NEH Summer Stipend for 2022, to support her book project “Religious Nostalgia from Shakespeare to Milton”
Calls for Papers
1. International Milton Symposium
The Thirteenth International Milton Symposium will be held at the University of Toronto, Canada, 10-14 July 2023. The International Milton Symposium welcomes scholars from across the world for five days of convivial discussion and debate. The Program Committee invites proposals for 20-minute papers on all aspects of Milton studies, from established approaches to new and emerging ones.
Please submit proposals (500 words max) here by July 1st or visit the conference website for more information.
2. Milton seminar, Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, and Writers (ALSCW)
ALSCW Twenty-Fifth Annual Conference, Yale University, October 20-23 2022; paper proposals due June 10 The 2022 ALSCW conference will include a seminar on Milton, convened by Tobias Gregory.
Papers welcome on any aspect of Milton’s work: poetry, prose, theology, politics, influence, reception. Papers will be circulated in advance among seminar participants and discussed at the conference. Proposals of 300 words and a C.V. should be sent as email attachments to David Bromwich at <david.bromwich@yale.edu> and Ernest Suarez at <suarez@cua.edu> by June 10, 2022. Conference CFP here.
Unexpected Milton Sightings
Vice-President Steve Fallon spotted this appreciation of Areopagitica by John J. Miller, which appeared in the Wall Street Journal on May 6th.
Executive Committee member Tianhu Hao noticed this series of three images of London after the bombing of WWII, published in World Pictorial (Shanghai), 1941, vol. 3, no. 3, p. 13. One of them is an image of Milton’s bust in St. Giles Cripplegate.

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Until next time, friends—
Alison (achapman@uab.edu – incoming MSA president)
Brooke (b.conti@csuohio.edu – past MSA president)