About Administrative Team

San Jose State University invites proposals for papers and panels on reading, teaching, and translating John Steinbeck for the Steinbeck conference to be held March 22-24, 2023 at San Jose State. Said Daniel Rivers, assistant professor of American studies and literature and newly appointed director of the university’s Martha Heasley Cox Center for Steinbeck Studies: “We invite proposals from varied disciplines and critical frameworks, including but not limited to literary/cultural studies, comparative literature, media studies, secondary and post-secondary education, psychology, political science, sociology, ecology, and marine biology. Potential topics include comparative studies of Steinbeck and post-Steinbeck writers, issues in translating Steinbeck’s works into other languages, stage/film/video adaptations, and approaches to teaching Steinbeck in contemporary classrooms.”

Email a 300-word or less abstract of the paper you propose to present, along with your biography of 200 words or less, to Steinbeck@sjsu.edu with the subject line “Steinbeck Conference 2023 Submission, [your last name].” If you are interested in suggesting a pre-constituted panel, workshop, or roundtable session for the conference, note the title, the format, and the names of your co-presenters in your online submission to the same address. If you are interested in soliciting participants for your proposed panel, workshop, or roundtable session, email your topic and request with the subject line “Panel CFP Steinbeck Conference 2023.” Your topic and invitation will be shared with the center’s mailing list. The deadline for all submissions is November 15, 2022.

Above: John Steinbeck caricature by David Levine.

John Steinbeck was no accidental tourist when it came to the Republic of Mexico. Although he later expressed a preference for the mother culture of Spain, he traveled to Mexico early and often for personal and professional purposes: for escape and recovery, for literary and film material, and (some speculate) for at least one abortion for at least one of his three wives. Current criticism faults him for the absence of Mexicans, blacks, and other non-white characters in his 1939 protest novel The Grapes of Wrath, but four works from the following decade—The Forgotten Village and Sea of Cortez (1941), The Pearl (1947), and Viva Zapata (1952)—reflect Steinbeck’s fascination with the history and people of a country that was less than a day’s drive but utterly different from his hometown of Salinas, California. On October 2-3, 2021, the National Steinbeck Center in Salinas will celebrate Steinbeck’s Mexican connection with a schedule of in-person and online activities packaged and presented as Steinbeck and Mexico and priced at $20 a day ($17 for seniors). In addition to bingo, mural painting, and movies, the 40th annual Steinbeck festival includes online presentations by Richard Astro and Donald Kohrs on the writing of Sea of Cortez and by Vincent Parker on teaching Steinbeck in the 21st century. (The annual Steinbeck festival in Salinas used to take place in the spring to overlap with the triennial Steinbeck conference at San Jose State University, where discussion has begun about convening another conference in 2022.)