| The Authorized Paul Bowles Web Site |
|
The Jane and Paul Bowles Society is an independent author society for both Paul Bowles and Jane Bowles, whose members conduct academic, scholarly research on the Bowleses, and present papers and participate in panels at international and American literary conferences. |
History was made at the American Literature Association's annual conference held from May 30 to June 2, 2002, where The Jane and Paul Bowles Society was formed through the tireless efforts of David Racker of Temple University and co-founder Anne Foltz, Editor of the Society's publication Bowles Notes. Racker organized and recruited presenters for a panel on Paul Bowles entitled "Radical Exploration: Modernism, Domination, and Eroticism in the Work of Paul Bowles." John Hawley of Santa Clara University filled in as Panel Chair for Allen Hibbard who was en route to the Middle East. Panel presentations included Anne Foltz's "Subjected to the Arab Gaze: When the Other is US/Us" and David Racker's "The Awareness of Domination in the Work of Paul Bowles." Following a lively question and answer period, Racker and Foltz met with scholars interested in being part of this ground breaking organization. The principle aim of the Society is to celebrate the work of Jane and Paul Bowles in academic venues. The Society attends the Modern Language Association and American Literature Association annual conferences and presents panels geared toward scholarly investigations of works conceived by Jane and/or Paul Bowles. The Society also provides resources to interested instructors and teachers on how to include the Bowleses' works in university or college classroom settings. The Society's members feel Jane and Paul Bowles both made unique and significant contributions to 20th Century arts and letters, and these contributions deserve to be studied and properly acknowledged.
CALL FOR PAPERS: Performing Tangier 2008—“Borders, Beats, and Beyond” The 4th Annual International Conference—Tangier, Morocco May 16-19, 2008—Chellah Hôtel—Tanger, Maroc
Organized by: International Centre for Performance Studies, Morocco Research Group of Performance Studies, Abdelmalek Essaâdi University, Morocco University of London Institute in Paris (ULIP) Middle East Center, Middle Tennessee State University, USA Department of European Languages University of Wales, Aberystwyth, UK and the participation of members of The Jane and Paul Bowles Society
The fourth international Tangier conference will focus on the city as a site of transcultural encounters in art, literature, music, and politics in all periods up through the present and projecting into the future. We especially invite papers and panels to investigate the dynamics of the city’s cultural, spatial, and performative interactions, past, present, and future, including issues of change, confrontation, and alterity. We also invite a continuation of panels and discussions begun in previous conferences—following the methods and techniques of Juan Goytisolo as well as Andrew Hussey’s creative deconstruction of the urban morphology of Paris—of how Tangier might be re-invented as one of the World capitals of the twenty-first century. In broad historical terms we invite continuing evaluation of specific writers and artists who have come to or out of Tangier, from Tahar Ben Jelloun, Mohamed Choukri, Mohammed Azeddine Tazi, Ahmed Beroho, Souad Bahechar, Moumen Smihi, Farida Benlyazid, Anouar Majid, Jillali Farhati, Zobeir Ben Bouchta, to Mohammed Mrabet and including the oral tradition some of whose storytellers and artists who were translated by Paul Bowles, as well as modernist painters like Matisse, existentialist writers such as Bowles, dramatists of various stripes such as Jean Genet and the brilliant minimalist Samuel Beckett, “Beats” such as Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsburg, and others, as well as more general movements associated with the various African, Andalusian or Islamic influences on western music in general and more particularly on American jazz and blues like the outstanding collaborations of Dar Gnawa in Tangier with Jazz legend Randy Weston. Our perspectives and horizons are all-inclusive. Papers may focus on particular figures, paintings, films, performances, fictional texts or non-fiction, salient theoretical concerns, or historical and cultural issues. Creative, performative responses to the topic are also welcome. From this starting point, further papers and panels are invited to investigate the dynamics of the city’s cultural, spatial and performative interactions from past, present, and future. There will be a screening of the documentary film Paul Bowles: The Complete Outsider, produced and directed by Catherine Warnow and Regina Weinreich with a questions and answers discussion. (Presented by Regina Weinreich, the co-producer and co-director.) Another film to be shown during the conference is the award-winning documentary Let It Come Down: The Life of Paul Bowles, produced by Canadian filmmaker Jennifer Baichwal. Languages: Arabic, Tamazight, French, Spanish, and English. Abstracts are due by December 31, 2007, and should be submitted in Word document format to the coordinators of the conference. Final papers are due by March 30, 2008. (See e-mails below.) This annual international conference is organized in collaboration with The Embassy of The United States in Rabat, Instituto Cervantes (Tangier), La Ville de Tanger, Maroc. Registration Fee: US $75, payable upon arrival, which includes three gala dinners, a poster, and three books of published proceedings from the previous conferences. Final papers are due by March 30, 2008, and should be e-mailed to:
While the importance of Tangier for many Beat figures has always been recognized, the nature of the city’s role has not been thoroughly understood and articulated. Paul Bowles who had taken up residence in Tangier soon after World War II ended, unwittingly attracted a number of Beat figures to the city, even though his aesthetic vision stands in contrast to that of most of the Beats. In Tangier William S. Burroughs (with the help of Allen Ginsberg) assembled his masterpiece Naked Lunch. Brion Gysin, Gregory Corso, Jack Kerouac and others associated with the Beats made appearances in the city. Tangier also was a magnet for “late beats” such as Ira Cohen, Marc Schleiffer, Irving Rosenthal, Charles Wright, and Alfred Chester.
PAST LITERARY CONFERENCES “Performing/Picturing Tangier” An International Conference—Tangier, Morocco, February 8-10, 2007, Chellah Hotel Read the final program for the 2007 conference in Tangier in Word document format. Rather than effect a series of deconstructive moves upon Tangier’s semiotic systems, the conference will address the city’s morphology as a place individuals realize through spatial practices. As a crossroads city between Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, traveling to and through Tangier continuously constructs imaginative worlds in the tourist’s gaze that are fueled by memories, images, and stories of the historically renowned “Inter-Zone.” These outside views are functional within the endless process of place-making, as it provides access to the tourist cultures because words, images, and actions all have the ability to build, sustain, or destroy. The ongoing practice of place-making includes visitors’ stories, Tanjawi sense of place, and artistic works that sustain the mythical proportions that have been historically attributed to Tangier. As cultural geographer Yi-Fu Juan tells us, “a great city may be seen as the construction of words as well as stone.” Our main concern in this third annual conference is to critique the dialectical oscillation between words and stone and between physical places and imagined places as we focus on the city as an archaeological or forensic site of investigation. Space is open and undefined; when humans attach meaning to space it becomes place. Place is therefore highly individualized, but it is also a recognizable cultural construct of symbolic exchanges and interpretative conventions. It is construed in complex relationships between gaze and object within cultural expectations. Space and place, however, are kaleidoscopic, elusive, and difficult to define for they reflect the surging, shifting, and inchoate character of life itself as a dynamic performative experience. Our journey from “Writing Tangier” and “Voices of Tangier” to “Performing and Picturing Tangier” leads us to approach the city as a palimpsest, by acting out various forms of arché-writing over sites already written upon. The spatio-temporal continuum of Tangier is beyond the dialectics of colonial encounter. Our endeavors to track the traces of Mohamed Choukri, Paul Bowles, Henri Matisse, John Hopkins, William Burroughs, Mohammed Mrabet, Jillali Farhati, Farida Benlyazid, Ahmed Berouho, Zobier Benbouchta, and others are part of the performance and picturing of place that contribute powerfully to the place-making of the city. Dr. Allen E. Hibbard presented papers at the "Voices of Tangier" conference in January 2006, as did Jeffrey Miller. Dr. Hibbard, professor of modern American literature, criticism, and Middle Eastern literature and culture at Middle Tennessee State University, also attended the literary conference—"Writing Tangier"—held in Morocco from November 26-28, 2004. He has written and lectured extensively on Paul Bowles and is the author of Paul Bowles: A Study of the Short Fiction (Twayne Publishers/Macmillan, 1993). His most recent book, Paul Bowles, Magic & Morocco, was published by Cadmus Editions in 2004. From 1992 to 1994, Hibbard was a Fulbright Lecturer at the University of Damascus, Syria, and he taught and lectured at the American University of Cairo, Egypt from 1985 to 1989. Also in attendance was Jeffrey Miller, founder and director of Cadmus Editions, the author of Paul Bowles: A Descriptive Bibliography and editor of In Touch: The Letters of Paul Bowles. Cadmus Editions has published several books by John Hopkins, and The Pelcari Project (Cárcel de Árboles) by Rodrigo Rey Rosa, translated from Spanish by Bowles. Rodrigo Rey Rosa is the literary heir of the estate of Paul Bowles and Jane Bowles. Cadmus has also published Mohamed Choukri's Tennessee Williams in Tangier, with an introduction by Gavin Lambert. This conference, in honor of Mohamed Choukri, brought together scholars from Morocco, Spain, France, the United Kingdom, the United States, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and featured panel discussions and lively talks on various literary figures who have lived and worked in Tangier: Mohamed Choukri, Tennessee Williams, William Burroughs, Paul Bowles, Rachid Mimoun, Ángel Vázquez, Walter Harris, Samuel Pepys and Juan Goytisolo. Dr. Andrew Hussey, Senior Lecturer in French, Department of European Languages at the University of Wales at Aberystwyth and the Moroccan playwright Khalid Amine, of the English Department at l'Université Abdelmalek Essaâdi in Tétouan organized this conference in Tangier—a unique multicultural and multilingual city in North Africa. The 2002 conference was held at l'École Supérieure Roi Fahd de Traduction in Tangier, considered one of the most prestigious translation schools in the Arabic-speaking world, in cooperation with the British Council of Morocco. Board member Virginia Spencer Carr's biography, Paul Bowles: a Life, was published in the United States by Scribner, Simon & Schuster in November 2004. Peter Owen Publishers released the British edition of Paul Bowles: a Life in September 2005 in the United Kingdom. The Jane and Paul Bowles Society held two panels at the American Literature Association's conference in San Francisco, California from May 27-30, 2004. On Wednesday, December 29, 2004, the Jane and Paul Bowles Society presented papers by Allen Hibbard, Greg Mullins, David Racker, and Brian Edwards of Northwestern University, at the Modern Language Association's (MLA) Conference in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The panel was entitled "American–Maghrebi Space: From Paul Bowles to Mohammed Mrabet".
PAST HOMAGES TO PAUL BOWLES EVENT IN LISBON, PORTUGAL CENTRO CULTURAL DE BELÉM, MARCH 26-31, 2007 The Centro Cultural de Belém―CCB―presented a six-day homage to Paul Bowles in Lisbon, Portugal, from March 26 through March 31, 2007. Fernando Luís Sampaio was the curator of the event which included various readings from Bowles' works, a photo exhibition by Daniel Blaufuks, and screenings of Bernardo Bertolucci's adaptation of Bowles' novel The Sheltering Sky (in Portuguese: Um Chá no Deserto). Two documentaries were shown: Jennifer Baichwal's Let It Come Down: the Life of Paul Bowles, and Owsley Brown III's Night Waltz: The Music of Paul Bowles, with comments by Irene Herrmann, Paul Bowles' musical heir, who played Paul Bowles' Six Preludes for Piano and several of his songs set from texts by Tennessee Williams and Federico Garcia Lorca. The singer was Mário Redondo. At the conclusion there were performances of "Secret Words" by Paul Bowles, and traditional Moroccan music by the Master Musicians of Jajouka led by Bachir Attar. This special event in Lisboa, Portugal was entitled Um Abrigo na Terra (A Shelter on Earth).
BOWLES NOTES
Requests for previous issues of Bowles Notes should be directed to . Anne Foltz is currently a high school English teacher in Las Cruces, New Mexico, where she returned after being part of the English department faculty at the University of New Mexico. First introduced to Bowles in 1984, she has expanded her interests to include other writers in his circle of acquaintances, including William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg and Jean Genet. Among her works are "Paul Bowles", published in the summer 2000 issue of The Review of Contemporary Fiction. Foltz's ongoing projects pursue the ways contemporary writers confront and negotiate knowledge. She is also currently at work on an article examining the fiction of several East Indian writers of a religiously marginalized community. David Racker is a Visiting Assistant Professor of English at Temple University. He has published essays on modern French and American literature, Anglophone Indian writers, and literary theory. He is currently at work on a book examining American expatriate writers. One of his essays entitled "The Awareness of Domination in the Work of Paul Bowles" appeared in Bowles Notes 1. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
All content herein is Copyright © 2008, The Jane and Paul Bowles Society. The recommended screen size is 1024 x 768 or greater, with the text size set to medium. All rights reserved.