MSA Newsletter – December 2024

Dear Milton Society,

I hope 2024 is winding down as peacefully as possible for each of you. May the next year bring strength, patience, and perseverance in all that is good. Please read on for MSA news and updates.

PUBLICATIONS

Milton Quarterly and Milton Studies have a terrific lineup of articles from 2024; please see here and here.

In addition, several MSA members and friends send news of specific publications.

Matt Rickard has published “The Probability of Paradise Lost” in English Literary History 91.2 (2024), 345-75.

Stephen B. Dobranski has published two articles: “Paradise Lost and the Genre of Disaster Films” in Texas Studies in Literature and Language 66.2 (2024), 272-306 and “John Milton’s Sonnet 8 and the Power of Verse,” Medieval and Renaissance Studies 9 (2024), 97-110.

David Boocker sends word of the publication of Milton Reinvented: Cultural Reception in 19th-Century America and ‘Our Day’ (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025).

Orlando Reade’s What in Me is Dark: The Revolutionary Afterlife of Paradise Lost is now available (Astra, 2024). Check out Joe Moshenska’s review in The Guardian.

John Garrison has published Red Hot + Blue with Bloomsbury Press. The book intermixes memoir and cultural history as it reflects on the height of the AIDS epidemic in the early 1990s.

Jean E. Graham writes of two articles: “Gender Fluidity and Violence in Edward Herbert’s ‘Echo to a Rock,’” Early Modern Literary Studies 23, no. 2 (2024) and “‘Black Lord Herbert’ and the Construction of Race,” forthcoming in Studies in Philology 122 (Winter 2025), 81-98.

Dave Harper sends news that the ODNB November 2024 update includes his entry on Peter Hume (1640-1707), giving Hume his due as a founder of literary critique for his 1695 Annotations Upon Paradise Lost.

MILTONATHON

Milton’s Cottage led a 24-hour online global reading of Milton’s works starting at 11am GMT on 8 November 2024, the 350th anniversary of Milton’s death. The MSA was asked to organize the readings of Books I, III, and IV of Paradise Lost. Many thanks to all members and friends of the MSA who participated in this truly special event—whether you were listening or reading. The recording of the 24-hour reading is now available at https://www.miltonscottage.org/miltonathon/. Please again feel free to share with friends, colleagues, students, and family.

CONFERENCES AND TALKS

LECTURE

Doyeeta Majumdar sends word about an upcoming virtual lecture that will be of interest to scholars of Dante and Milton. See here for details and registration.

Monday, 16 December 2024
10.30 am ET / 3.30 pm GMT / 9 pm IST
Register: https://forms.gle/Z3DjquJCg2d5nePQ8

More: factorvalue.org/hell

MSA at MLA

The Milton Society of America is sponsoring two sessions at the upcoming Modern Language Association of America Convention in New Orleans, LA (9-12 January 2025).

Milton and Visibility (#389) – A Presidential Theme Session

Friday, 10 January 2025

 5:15 PM – 6:30 PM

Hilton Riverside New Orleans – Salon 12 (1st Floor)

“The Paper Messenger,” Tom Clayton, Colgate U

“Seeing the Body’s Prison in Comus, Paradise Lost, and Samson Agonistes,” Frances Ringwood, U of Zululand

“‘The World Was All before Them’: The End of Paradise Lost in Nineteenth-Century Visual Art,” Joseph Torres, U of California, Los Angeles

John Milton: A General Session (#494)

Saturday, 11 January 2025

10:15 AM – 11:30 AM

Hilton Riverside New Orleans – Chart A (Riverside Complex)

“Milton, Marlowe, and Empire,” Su Fang Ng, Virginia Tech

“On Two Kinds of Blind Standing: Samson Agonistes and Paradise Regained,” Amrita Dhar, UC San Diego

Also of possible interest to MSA members is the following panel organized by Carmen Nocentelli for the LLC 17th Century English Forum:

Early Modern Social Media (#718)

Sunday, 12 January 2025

10:15 AM-11:30 AM

Hilton Riverside New Orleans – Eglinton Winton

“To intimate intimacy: Margaret Cavendish’s Sociable Letters,” Emma K. Atwood, University of Montevallo

“Font of Enlightenment: Letterpress Type as Social Media”, Christopher Warren, Carnegie Mellon University

“Fortifications and Festivities: ‘Platforme’ Studies in Early Modern England,” Michael Menna, Stanford University

“Dark Humor: Misinformation, Ghostly Political Satire, and the Popish Plot,” Savannah Jensen, University of South Florida

MSA members and friends attending the MLA are warmly invited to an informal dinner on 10 January 2025 immediately following the Milton and Visibility session (see above). Costs for graduate student members of the MSA will be covered by the MSA. Please email MSA Secretary Marissa Greenberg at MiltonSocietySec@gmail.com if you would like to join. Having a sense of numbers will help us plan.

MSA MINI-CONFERENCE 2025: MILTON IN THE CURRICULUM

Milton in the Curriculum: A Global Conversation

The MSA will hold a two-hour-long virtual mini-conference on 14 February 2025 on the place of Milton in the curriculum in different parts of the world. Please watch this space for details closer to the time. All are welcome.

CFPs

British Milton Seminar

The Spring 2025 meeting of the British Milton Seminar will be held on 14 March 2025. See the call for papers here.

Canada Milton Seminar XVIII

9-10 May 2025

Victoria College, University of Toronto

Visit the website to learn more.

South Central Renaissance Conference

9-11 June 2025

Saint Louis University, St. Louis, MO

See the website to learn more and submit abstracts by 31 December 2024.

MSA at RSA

The Milton Society of America is sponsoring several sessions at the upcoming Renaissance Society of America Conference in Boston in Spring 2025. Stay tuned for information about panels and the MSA Annual Dinner to be held on Friday, 21 March 2025, at Maggiano’s Little Italy. In the meantime, if you know of or are participating in panels that would be of interest to members of the MSA, please let us know via the MSA news intake form here: https://miltonsociety.net/news-form/. We’d love to get the word out in the next newsletter.

MSA WEBSITE UPDATE REQUEST

The MSA Officers are working to update the MSA website. Our Awards pages, in particular, do not yet list all award recipients. If you have received an MSA book or article award, we need your help now. Please check the relevant webpage for your award to check if you are listed—and whether you are listed correctly for the award and year. If any information is missing or incorrect, please write to the MSA Secretary Marissa Greenberg at MiltonSocietySec@gmail.com with full information so that the web page can be updated.

REMINDERS

We love sharing the good news of our members’ publications, career changes, and other professional news and accomplishments. If you encounter interesting Miltoniana in your wanderings, virtual or otherwise, we’d love to share that too. Just drop us a line using the news update form on the home page of the MSA website (https://miltonsociety.net/) and also linked here: https://miltonsociety.net/news-form/.

Please also recommend MSA membership to your academic friends, colleagues, and graduate students who aren’t members yet. There are so many scholars actively engaging with Milton who are not yet members of the MSA. And we have arguably the best Lifetime Membership rates out there! Spreading the word by mouth and friendship is possibly the best means to bolster our ranks. 

Amrita Dhar, MSA President