2026 marks the centennial anniversary of the publication of Ernest Hemingway’s first novel, The Sun Also Rises. Lauded then and now for its aesthetic innovations and attention to spiritual malaise and the search for meaning in a world marked by institutional corruption and collapse, the novel’s keen attention to gender, race, sex, and the environment, among other issues and concerns, provided for its being celebrated as a mouthpiece of the so-called “Lost Generation.” The panelists on this webinar will reflect on the “enduring relevance” of The Sun Also Rises to readers today, a century after its publication.

Panelists:

Debra Moddelmog, Dean of Liberal Arts Emerita and Professor of English Emerita, University of Nevada, Reno

Debra Moddlemog is author or editor of five books and many articles on American literature, teaching, and academic women’s leadership. Among her books are Reading Desire: In Pursuit of Ernest Hemingway (Cornell University Press, 1999), Ernest Hemingway in Context, co-edited with Suzanne del Gizzo, (Cambridge University Press, 2012), and an edition of The Sun Also Rises (Broadview Press, 2024). She serves on the editorial board of The Hemingway Review and on the Advisory Board of the Hemingway Letters Project. Prior to her six-year tenure as Dean of Liberal Arts at UNR (2016–2022), she had a 30-year career as a professor of English and an administrator at The Ohio State University, where she is Emerita Professor of English.

Marcos Antonio Norris, Senior Instructor, School of Writing, Literature, and Film, Oregon State University

Marcos Antonio Norris is the author of Hemingway and Agamben: Finding Religion Without God (Edinburgh University Press, 2023) and co-editor of two essay collections including Agamben and the Existentialists (Edinburgh University Press, 2021; with Colby Dickinson) and Hemingway and Posthumanism (Edinburgh University Press, 2025; with Ryan Hediger). The author of more than a dozen peer-reviewed articles, Norris’s research focuses on the intersections among contemporary continental philosophy, political theology, and twentieth-century American literature.

Verna Kale, Associate Research Professor of English and Associate Editor of the Hemingway Letters Project, Penn State

Verna Kale is the editor of the Norton Library Edition of The Sun Also Rises (2025) and author of the critical biography Ernest Hemingway (Reaktion Books/University of Chicago Press, 2016). She is also editor of Teaching Hemingway and Gender (Kent State University Press, 2016) and co-editor, with Sandra Spanier and Miriam B. Mandel, of The Letters of Ernest Hemingway, Volumes 6 and 7 (Cambridge University Press). Kale was a program advisor to the PBS documentary film HEMINGWAY (2021), directed by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, and she currently serves as president of the Ernest Hemingway Foundation and Society.

Moderator:

Katie Painter, Graduate Student, Department of English, Penn State

This webinar is part of the 2026–2027 CALS “Unprecedented” Webinar Series.