Professor Carlos Dews Delivers Keynote Address at American Literature Society of Japan Conference

On October 22, 2023, John Cabot University’s Professor of English Carlos Dews delivered the keynote address at the annual meeting of the American Literature Society of Japan. The annual conference was held at the Sapporo Gakiun University in Sapporo, Hokkaido, Japan. Professor Dews delivered a lecture titled “The Collected Letters of Carson McCullers: A Case Study in 20th-Century American Literary Friendships” based on the statistical analysis of the letters by Carson McCullers that he is preparing for publication by Harper Collins in 2025. 

The conference was attended by more than 100 professors from all over Japan who specialize in the study of American literature. Professor Dews’s host for the conference was Professor Miho Matsui of Sapporo City University. “It was an honor to be asked to speak at such a prestigious conference. I greatly enjoyed my time at the conference. It was heartening to see that there are so many serious scholars of American literature, especially Southern literature, at work in Japan,” Professor Dews said of the experience. Professor Dews’s trip to Japan was supported, in part, by funds from the JCU Faculty Development Committee.

Born in Nacogdoches, Texas, Carlos Dews holds an M.A. and Ph.D. in American Literature (University of Minnesota) and an M.F.A. in Fiction Writing (The New School). He is a leading expert in the life and work of American novelist Carson McCullers, whom he has been researching for almost thirty years. He edited McCullers’s unfinished autobiography Illumination and Night Glare, and numerous other works. Founding Director of the Carson McCullers Center for Writers and Musicians at Columbus State University in Columbus, Georgia, Professor Dews was also the Founding President of the Carson McCullers Society, an organization of scholars dedicated to research on McCullers’s life and work. In 2020 he published the novel Hush (Negative Capability Press).