Wallace and Religious Literature by Nan Denette
Religion and Literature by Nan Denette My first reading of Infinite Jest as a teenager was largely why I decided to study literature in college and why I declared a major in English after just one semester. A year later, however, I added a seemingly unrelated double major in religious studies. Entering into this field, I learned that […]
MAPACA Follow-up: So, you took a blue pen…
So, you went to MAPACA 2018 and took a blue pen…now what? Thank you for your interest in the International David Foster Wallace Society! Or, thank you for your interest in blue pens! Either way, we are so glad that you found your way to our webpage. There are many ways that you can get involved in the DFW […]
CFP for the ALA
The International David Foster Wallace Society will sponsor two panels at the 30th annual conference of the American Literature Association in Boston on May 23-26, 2019. We are seeking submissions related to any aspect of Wallace’s fiction or nonfiction. Paper topics may include but are not limited to: Please send abstracts of no more than 300 […]
Wallace and Affect Theory: Emotional Pain, Empathy, and “The Depressed Person” by Ryan KerrD
Affect theory attempts to make sense of our emotions and their implications. Specifically, affect theory is aimed at understanding feelings that are “relational and transformative” (Flatley 12). We often feel strong emotions when we read a particularly dramatic piece of fiction, but what are we to do once we understand what we feel? Furthermore, what […]
Lost David Foster Wallace Interview from 1989
The great literary critic and scholar Steven Moore reached out to us this month to say that he had discovered an interview with David Foster Wallace in an obscure and forgotten journal/fanzine called Engender. This is likely Wallace’s second “published” interview, albeit in a very limited venue. His first, more traditional interview, came as part of […]
How to Avoid being Totally Hosed: David Foster Wallace and Damien Echols
Written by Ándrea Laurencell Sheridan, Diversity Team Coordinator When I’m not spending my time diligently diversifying the International David Foster Wallace Society or teaching my seven sections of mainly introductory literature courses, my guilty pleasure is true crime. Specifically, the wrongfully convicted. When I begin my PhD program in the Humanities next fall, I plan to […]
What’s The Opposite of A Cult Following? Sergio De La Pava’s Lost Empress
By Alex Moran and Diego Báez Sergio De La Pava’s career as a prolific author may not have seemed readily apparent when his debut novel, A Naked Singularity (2008), first appeared on self-publishing platform Xlibris exactly ten years ago today. And much has been made of De La Pava’s story of literary ascendance: a public defender in New York City, […]
DFW Syllabus Project: Who’s Teaching Wallace? And Where?
I began searching for ways to incorporate David Foster Wallace’s essays into non-literature-based classrooms almost one year ago. I was needlessly worried that I would only be able to find syllabi for English courses, which would not be very useful in my classroom full of freshmen pursing STEM majors. As I began this search for how DFW’s […]
And Now For Something Completely Different: Writing From the Margins of Wallace
IDFWS Diversity Committee member Cynthia Zhang grapples with a beloved artist’s reprehensible behavior and the ramifications for a conflicted fan base. By Cynthia Zhang (cw: sexual assault and associated topics, Nazism, general racism and unpleasantness) Early 2016, maybe late 2015. It’s my last year of college, and I’ve finally decided to say fuck it to […]