9:00 AM: Introductory Remarks
9:00 AM- 10:00 AM—Panel One: “Consider the Career: Early Fiction to Late Non-Fiction”
Moderator: Brandon Beirne, NYU
Connie Luther, University of Calgary
“Allegory and Symbolism in ‘Westward the Course of Empire Takes its Way’: Postmodern Disclosure Disclosed”
Elizabeth Freudenthal, Georgia Institute of Technology
“David Foster Wallace, Embodiment, and Identity from the Outside In”
Adam Kelly, University College Dublin
“Democracy in America: David Foster Wallace’s Political Essays”
10:10 AM – 11:10 AM—Panel Two: “Filmic Entertainments”
Moderator: Carrie Shanafelt, CUNY-Graduate Center
Alison Wielgus, University of Iowa
“From the Abyss: James O. Incandenza and the Films of Infinite Jest”
Rodney Taveira, University of Sydney
“In the Face of David Foster Wallace”
David Hering, University of Liverpool
“Dreams Within Dreams: Wallace, Lynch, Oblivion”
11:20 AM – 12:20 PM—Panel Three: “The Philosophies of David Foster Wallace”
Moderator: Nico Israel, CUNY-Hunter College and the Graduate Center
Maureen Eckert, University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth
“Where the Conversation Lapses…Understanding DFW’s Philosophy Thesis”
Thomas Tracey, Oxford University
“‘Like The Sky’: Responsibility in Wallace’s Early Fiction”
Joshua Sperling, Yale University
“Reading Infinite Jest through Heidegger’s ‘The Question Concerning Technology’”
12:30 PM – 1:30 PM—Break for Lunch
1:30 PM – 2:30 PM—Panel Four: “The Biographical Question”
Moderator: Nick Maniatis, Melba Copland Secondary School, Canberra, Australia; Webmaster, The Howling Fantods
Erin Lee Mock, CUNY Graduate Center
“The Biography of Madness by Assemblage: The Case of David Foster Wallace”
Matt Bucher, Independent Scholar
“Fantods: David Foster Wallace, wallace-l, and Literary Fandom Online”
Christine Harkin, Independent Scholar
“Taboos, Discourse, and New Media: Blogging the Death of David Foster Wallace”
2:40 PM – 3:40 PM—Panel Five: “Language, Communication, and the Project of Wallace’s Fiction”
Moderator: Gerhard Joseph, CUNY-Lehman College and the Graduate Center
Mary Holland, SUNY New Paltz
“‘To be a [. . .] human being’: Mediated Immediacy in David Foster Wallace”
Jon Udelson, The City College of New York
“Inconclusive Endings: DFW’s Search for the Right Word(s): ‘Planet Trillaphon,’ Broom, and “Good Old Neon’”
Timothy Jacobs, York University
“Infinite Geist: Lexical Investigation, Mediation, and the Ghost of the Author”
4:00 PM – 5:00 PM—Keynote Address
Stephen Burn, Northern Michigan University
“Infinite Expansion Inward: David Foster Wallace and the Concept of
Character in Contemporary Fiction”
5:00 PM – 6:00 PM –Reception