Dr. Aaron Shaheen (middle) stands between John Dos Passos Coggin (left) and Dr. Alberto Luca, the current owner of the Villa Ca’ Erizzo Luca in Bassano del Grappa, Italy, during the John Dos Passos Conference. Photo courtesy of Dr. Aaron Shaheen.
The George C. Connor Professorship of American Literature and the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Department of English were co-sponsors of the fourth biennial John Dos Passos Conference, held May 23-25 in Bassano del Grappa, Italy.
The conference celebrated the life, writings and enduring influence of John Dos Passos (1896-1970), an American novelist and artist whose contributions to modernist literature remain significant. He is renowned for his “U.S.A. trilogy” comprising the novels “The 42nd Parallel” (1930), “1919” (1932) and “The Big Money” (1936), which depict the socio-political landscape of the United States during the early 20th century through innovative narrative techniques.
Dr. Aaron Shaheen, the George C. Connor Professor of American Literature at UTC, organized the conference.
“This latest conference was the most international of the four that have been held,” said Shaheen, noting that scholars from 12 countries attended the conference.
Previous conferences took place at UTC (2014), in Madrid, Spain (2016), and in Lisbon, Portugal (2018). Notably, this was the first Dos Passos conference since the lifting of international COVID-19 restrictions in 2022.
Set against the historic backdrop of Villa Ca’ Erizzo Luca, the conference venue resonated with history. In early 1918, Dos Passos served here as an American Red Cross ambulance driver during World War I. Later that year, the villa also sheltered a recuperating Ernest Hemingway, who had sustained a leg wound while delivering provisions to Italian troops on the Piave front.
Shaheen said conference presenters included recent UTC graduate Alexis Armour—the recipient of a Master of Arts in English in May—and the conference namesake’s grandson, John Dos Passos Coggin.
The chief sponsor of the conference, the John Dos Passos Society, was founded at UTC in 2011 by Shaheen and Victoria Bryan, a two-time University alumna (2007 and 2009) who—at the time—was pursuing her Ph.D. from the University of Mississippi. Bryan, now the director of UTC’s Walker Teaching and Learning Center, earned her doctoral degree from Ole Miss in 2014.
“When Victoria Bryan was one of my graduate students, she read a Dos Passos novel for the first time and it really resonated with her,” Shaheen recalled. “After she moved on to Ole Miss, she asked me if I was interested in creating a Dos Passos Society—and I said, ‘Of course.’”
Within a few months of its founding, they had already tracked down Dos Passos Coggin, “who has been a friend of ours ever since,” Shaheen said. “He and his mother are sort of the co-executors of the Dos Passos Literary Estate, so we’ve had constant contact with the family. I consider John Dos Passos Coggin a close friend of mine.”
Reflecting on the journey of the conference, Shaheen spoke of past gatherings. The inaugural conference in 2014 at UTC sparked enthusiasm that led a Spanish scholar to host the next event in Madrid in 2016. The success of the Madrid conference inspired a Portuguese scholar to hold the 2018 conference in Lisbon.
“Building on the success and turnout of the Bassano conference, the Dos Passos Society has chosen to hold its next conference on the Portuguese island of Madeira—Dos Passos’ ancestral homeland,” Shaheen said.
UTC participants in past international Dos Passos conferences have included UC Foundation Professor of Spanish Lynn Purkey and Professor Emerita Verbie Prevost.
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John Dos Passos Conference/Bassano del Grappa photo gallery courtesy of Dr. Aaron Shaheen
The fourth biennial John Dos Passos Conference took place in the 18th-century Cappella Mares on the south end of the Villa Ca’ Erizzo Luca complex. The cappella is dedicated to the Venetian violinist virtuoso Gaetano Mares, whose elegant tomb is seen in the background.
