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Janet Ruth Heller presented a memoir chapter and a literary analysis at the conference of the Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature on May 28-30, 2024.

Janet Ruth Heller presented a memoir chapter and a literary analysis at the conference of the Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature on May 28-30, 2024 in East Lansing, Michigan. The title of her memoir chapter is “A Pat on the Back Is Only a Few Inches Away from a Kick in the Pants.”  This autobiographical essay is about being raised by hypercritical parents.

Janet also did an analysis of “An Awakening,” one of the stories in Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio (1919). Her paper was titled “Multiple Awakenings in Sherwood Anderson’s Story ‘An Awakening.’” This story has three main characters: the young reporter George Willard; the woman he cares about, Belle Carpenter; and the older man whom Belle loves, the bartender Ed Handby. The story’s title emphasizes the theme of reaching a new awareness about one’s life. As the plot progresses, all three characters wake up to realize their desires, their true power, and their place in Winesburg’s society.

#memoir #literarycriticism #SherwoodAnderson #WinesburgOhio #power #parentalcriticism 

Photo of Janet Ruth Heller by Diane Joy Schmidt
Photo of Janet Ruth Heller by Diane Joy Schmidt
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Janet Ruth Heller

I am the past president of the Michigan College English Association. I have a Ph.D. in English Language and Literature from the University of Chicago. I have published four poetry books: Nature's Olympics (Wipf and Stock, 2021), Exodus (WordTech Communications, 2014), Folk Concert: Changing Times (Anaphora Literary Press, 2012) and Traffic Stop (Finishing Line Press, 2011). My scholarly book, Coleridge, Lamb, Hazlitt, and the Reader of Drama, was published in 1990 by the University of Missouri Press. My fiction picture book about bullying for children, How the Moon Regained Her Shape (Arbordale, 2006; 7th edn. 2022), has won four national awards. My play The Cell Phone won fourth place in a national contest and was performed twice at the Fenton Village Players One-Act Play Festival on June 24-25, 2011 in Fenton, Michigan. Triton College produced another play, Pledging, as part of its Tritonysia Play Festival in May 2017. Choeofpleirn Press published Pledging in Rushing Through the Dark (2022).