President’s Message

Welcome!

The Joseph Conrad Society of America is now celebrating its first half-centenary: 1975-2025. Established to promote and encourage appreciation of the works of Joseph Conrad, and to foster academic study of that key figure, the Society  has always welcomed members from a variety of critical and creative backgrounds.

As a writer spanning the end of the nineteenth century and the modernistic beginnings of the twentienth, Conrad’s example continues to spur a diverse set of innovative and interdisciplinary approaches. The Society seeks to support emerging scholarship on Conrad’s life and work, and to provide a collegial network for its readers. In addition to augmenting new frames of understanding for this author, we are dedicated to honoring long-standing contributions to Conrad studies alongside the communities of Conradian scholars from which such insights were drawn.

Our modest dues support travel grants for students to attend conferences, annual awards for both young scholars and established academics, and biennial awards for lifetime achievement. Periodically the Society organizes its own conferences. As an Allied Organization of the Modern Language of Association, the Society regularly organizes panels for the annual MLA convention, where it holds a supper for members and guests.

Since its inception, the Society has published a newsletter, Joseph Conrad Today, which is now a semi-annual publication. JCT publishes reports and abstracts of papers presented at conferences in the U.S. and abroad, copious reviews of recent books of Conrad studies, and other news of interest in the Conrad world. A subscription to JCT comes with Society membership.

Comments and suggestions are welcome on all aspects of our mandate and work. Don’t hesitate to contact me at mark_deggan@sfu.ca

Mark Deggan.

President, Joseph Conrad Society of America

Senior Lecturer in World Literature

Simon Fraser University, Vancouver BC Canada

 

The Joseph Conrad Society of America is grateful for the generosity of Philip Conrad for permission to reprint photographs of Joseph Conrad and for the generosity of Mark Summers for permission to reprint his drawing of Conrad on the masthead (second image from the right). We are also grateful to Brian Burch for his help in creating the earlier web site, which this has replaced.