The Edith Wharton Society is delighted to join forces with the Transatlantic Literary Women to continue the wonderful tradition of the Edith Wharton Birthday Talk every January. For the past five years, eminent scholars have given a talk to celebrate Wharton’s birthday and women’s transatlantic literature, more broadly. This year, we are delighted to host the amazing Cynthia J. Davis, Professor at the U of South Carolina, who will be giving a talk on “Passions and Privacies”: Edith Wharton’s Affective Distinctions between the U.S. and Europe.

Prof. Davis is the recipient of two Fulbright US Scholar awards and a NEH Humanities Fellowship in American Studies. She is currently editing the life writings volume for Oxford UP’s The Complete Works of Edith Wharton. Stanford UP published her first two single-authored books, the first on the influence of medicine on US literature, and the second, a biography of Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Her latest book, Pain and the Aesthetics of U.S. Literary Realism, was published by Oxford UP in 2022. Her talk will draw on both the Wharton chapter from that recent monograph and a recent article, “‘Alive in Every Fibre’: Chopin and Wharton on Pain, Pleasure, and Private Feeling,” which appeared in a special issue of American Literature.

For more information, please see the link:

As always, all are welcome! If you’d like to attend, please email: transatlantic.women@gmail.com to receive a secure Zoom link.

With many thanks to Cynthia for joining us, to the Transatlantic Literary Women, and to the Whartonians all over the world who are helping to uphold this tradition!