The William Morris Society in the US will host two sessions at the 2026 Modern Language Association Annual Convention, to be held January 8-11, 2026 in Toronto, Canada.
Art and Smoke: Ruskin, Morris, Art, and Industrialism
Chair, Florence S. Boos, University of Iowa
“A Smokeless Place: William Morris, John Ruskin, and Reviving a Dream of Community,” Joshua Fagan, University of Washington
“Smoke is King: Ruskin, Morris, and Hopkins on Art and Industrialism,” Jude V. Nixon, Salem State University
“The Aesthetics of Anti-Industrial Utopianism in William Morris’s News from Nowhere,” Harry Hall, Harvard University
“Love as Resistance: William Morris, Guenevere, and the Moral Consequences of Industrialization,” Donna Lynn Tillotson, Queen’s University
William Morris and Material Culture
Chair, Jude V. Nixon, Salem State University
“William Morris as a Hinge Figure for Way & Williams publishers (in 1895),” Craig J. Saper, University of Maryland Baltimore County
“Morris Manuscripts: Images, Color, Spacing, Text,” Florence S. Boos, University of Iowa
“Preservation, Botanical Books & the Kelmscott Press,” Jennifer Rabedeau, Cornell University
“Mock-Medieval Materiality: the uncharted influence of William Morris on Modern Fantasy,” Alexandra du Plessis, University of Cambridge