PROGRAM
updated 9/28/26
“The World Entire: Cormac McCarthy’s Expanding Influence”
Fall 2026 Cormac McCarthy Society Conference
Crowne Plaza Hotel
401 W. Summit Hill Drive, Knoxville, TN
Thursday, Oct. 8, 2026
9:00-9:10
President’s Welcome: Stacey Peebles, Centre College
9:10-10:25
Panel 1: Images, Maps, and Worlds
Chair: Rick Elmore
Kelly James, Independent Scholar
"Gratuitous Violins: Patterns, Bach, and Cormac McCarthy"
Kateřina Kovářová, University of South Bohemia
“‘In the darkness of those bathypelagic deeps’: Sea Imagery in Cormac McCarthy’s The Passenger”
Eli Dyer, University of Tennessee
“Who is the Passenger?: An Analysis of Human Choice in Cormac McCarthy’s Fiction”
10:35-11:50
Panel 2: The Art of Becoming: How McCarthy's Works Work
Chair: Scott Yarbrough
Michael Crews, Regent University
“'Art is failed religion': Eros and Irony in Cormac McCarthy's Fiction”
Todd Womble, Abilene Christian University
“Cormac McCarthy: College Student”
April Trepagnier, University of Tennessee
“The ‘universal ailment: the need to be loved’: Reading Child of God with Students”
12:00-1:00
Lunch on your own
1:10-2:25
Panel 3: A Cormackian Pedagogy
Chair: Bill Hardwig
Gavin Paul, The University of British Columbia
"‘I read it front to back’: Teaching McCarthy in a Great Books Course”
Jackson Davis, The Brighton School
“Literacy research in teaching comprehension using Cormac McCarthy's All the Pretty Horses and No Country for Old Men”
Brian Schill, University of North Dakota
“Old Cormac, New Criticism”
2:35-4:50
Panel 4: McCarthy, Translated in Word and Image
Chair: Stacey Peebles
Kazuhiko Yamaguchi, Sophia University
“Cormac McCarthy within the Tradition of Japanese ‘Translation Literature’”: The Translating Subject and the Translated Subject”
Beowulf Sheehan, Professional Photographer
“The Father of the Man: The Last Author Portrait Sitting with Cormac McCarthy”
4:00-5:15
Panel 5: Codes and Systems
Chair: April Trepagnier
Lexi Brown, Missouri Southern State University
“Even Cowboys Get the Blues: Relational Colonial Borders of (Hyper)masculinity, Race, and Power in Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses”
Drew Creed, Missouri Southern State University
“Fathers, Sons, and Prophets: How Religion Survives After Apocalypse in Cormac McCarthy's The Road”
Abby Green, Missouri Southern State University
“The Bear, the Judge, and the Jakes: An Exploration of Animal(istic) Symbolism in McCarthy’s Blood Meridian”
6:00
Opening reception
The Square Room
4 Market Square
Friday, Oct. 9
8:00-9:15
Panel 6: Books that Make the Books: Literary Influence
Chair: Jon Elmore
Maisie Smith, Baylor University
“‘Each age must write its own books:’ No Country for Old Men and the Failure of Transcendentalism in Modern America”
Amy Thomas, Independent Scholar
“Literary Inheritance and the Logic of Violence: Jack London and Cormac McCarthy”
Scott Yarbrough, Charleston Southern University
“The Anxiety of Influence: McCarthy’s Move from Faulknerian Ephebe to Mastery in The Orchard Keeper”
9:25-10:40
Panel 7: Gender, Gendered Relations, and the Body
Chair: Lydia Cooper
Peter Rogati, Independent Scholar
"'Like a child beginning to cry': Elaine Scarry and the Wounded Male Body in Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses"
Nell Sullivan, University of Houston-Downtown
“The Feminine Copula in Male Homosociality in No Country for Old Men”
Brent Cline, Hillsdale College
"’They Seldom Mention the Good’: Marriage and the Good in Cormac McCarthy”
10:50-12:05
Panel 8: Philosophies of McCarthy
Chair: Steve Frye
Michael Beilfuss, Missouri Southern State University
"'Some sort of promise in his heart’: Hope and the Sacredness of Disciplined Action in Cormac McCarthy's Writing”
Jon and Rick Elmore, Louisiana Tech University and Appalachian State University (respectively)
“‘A strange silence in the room': Freedom, Choice, and Human Nature in the Kekulé Essays and Blood Meridian”
Bryan Vescio, Highpoint University
“The Conversation of Mankind: Dialogue and Discourse Ethics in McCarthy”
12:15-1:15
Lunch on your own
1:25-2:40
Panel 9: Faith, Doubt, and Morality
Chair: Brent Cline
Richard Rankin Russell, Baylor University
“Bend it Like Beckett: The Arc of the Moral Universe, Evil, and the Exilic Self in Blood Meridian”
Rachel Griffis, Spring Arbor University
“Cormac McCarthy and Anglo-Saxon Christianity”
Steven Frye, California State University-Bakersfield
“McCarthy, Radical Skepticism, and the Natural World”
2:50-4:05
Panel 10: Trauma and Anxiety
Chair: Bryan Vescio
Olivia Claire Williams, University of North Alabama
“‘Are we the good guys?’: Carrying the Fire in McCarthy’s Posthuman World”
Dianne C. Luce, Emerita, Midlands Technical College
“Traumatic Visions: The Kid, the Judge, and the Coldforger in Blood Meridian's Drafts”
Tomasz Śledź, Kazimierz Wielki University
“Monarchs of None They Survey: Epistemic Anxiety and Epistemophilic Instinct in Cormac McCarthy's The Road”
4:15-5:30
Panel 11: The Economics of McCarthy
Chair: Lydia Cooper
Adam Morton, University of Sydney
“‘Hell in spectacles’: Reckoning the Account of Neoliberalism in No Country for Old Men”
Amy May Fischli, Adelaide University
“McCarthy’s World of Shopping: Economics of Modernity in The Road”
6:00
Evening keynote by Richard Grant
"Serendipitous Journey: Adventures in the Private World of a Literary Genius"
East Tennessee History Center
601 South Gay Street
Saturday, Oct. 10
8:00-9:15
Panel 12: Deep Dives in McCarthy's Work
Chair: Brad Bannon
Nicolas Delon, College of Charleston
“Between the Archatron and Bach: McCarthy’s Nihilists”
John Vanderheide and Candy Minx, Huron University and Independent Scholar (respectively)
“The Meridien Tarot Deck: A Collaborative Research-Creation Project in Cormac McCarthy Studies”
Wes Morgan, Emeritus, University of Tennessee
“Alice in Stupidville: Coincidence or Literary Easter Egg”
9:25-10:40
Panel 13: New Looks at the Atomic Books
Chair: Bill Hardwig
Jordan Dominy, Auburn University at Montgomery
“‘Are you sure you want to hear all this?’: Companionship in The Passenger and Stella Maris”
Lydia R. Cooper, Seattle University
“The ELIZA Problem: A.I., Language, and Being Human in Cormac McCarthy’s Stella Maris”
10:50-12:05
Panel 14 – Cormac McCarthy’s Library
Stacey Peebles, Centre College
"The Cormac McCarthy Library Project"
Jennifer Mezick, Associate Dean, and Anchalee (Joy) Panigabutra-Roberts, Head of Cataloging, University of Tennessee Libraries
"The Cormac McCarthy Cataloging Project and Collection at the University of Tennessee Libraries"
Joshua Ortiz Baco, University of Tennessee
"The Library Catalog as Data: A Case Study of Catalog Metadata from the Cormac McCarthy Library Collection"
12:15-1:15
Conference lunch with featured speaker Tracy Daugherty
"Desert Screens: Cormac's Love of Remoteness"
1:25-2:40
Panel 15: Prophecy, Vision, and Doom
Chair: Scott Yarbrough
David Mikics, New College of Florida
“Blood Meridian and The Passenger as American Prophecy”
Cody Ward, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
“Climate Studies and an Appalachian Sense of Place in Cormac McCarthy's The Road”
Terra Kirkland, Independent Scholar
“The Poorly Guided Winged Soul: Alicia Western and Plato's Phaedrus in Cormac McCarthy's The Passenger and Stella Maris”
2:50-4:15
Panel 16: Blood, Bodies, and Geographies of Being
Chair: Jordan Dominy
Brittany Maloy, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
“Blood That Is All Meridian: McCarthy’s Byronic Inspiration for Blood Meridian”
Brett Lewis, University of Central Arkansas
“Drafting the Apocalypse: Geography, Revision, and Erasure in “The Grail” draft of The Road”
Will Attig, Royal Holloway, University of London
“Cannibalism and Repetition in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road”
4:30
Jack Evans presents a preview of his short film Cormac's Library