The annual convention of the Modern Language Association will take place in January 2026 in Toronto. As ever, the Samuel Beckett Society will be represented at a guaranteed panel. This year’s offering promises to be a particularly strong one as it throws light on an area of huge interest currently in Beckett Studies by providing papers from three exceptional members.
Under the title Rewriting the Modernist Wife: Beckett, Stein, Toklas, Dumesnil, the panel contemplates the frequently marginalised figure of the companion/wife of modernist authors in general and of Beckett’s in particular. The panel’s abstract notes that ‘both within and beyond Beckett Studies, numerous projects are working to redress the representation of women in modernism’ citing the 2023 special issue of the Journal of Beckett Studies which focused on ‘Beckett’s Women Contemporaries’, as well as the 2025 Beckett Society conference whose theme was ‘Beckett’s Relationships’. In addition, the abstract continues, ‘Pascale Sardin’s biography of Barbara Bray (2024) and Emilie Morin’s biography of Suzanne Dumesnil, Suzanne Beckett (2025) seek to actively correct blind spots in the field. This panel contributes to this evolving conversation by adding to this growing area of scholarship working to reclaim Dumesnil on a biographical level by examining her literary and artistic output while also conducting a broader critique of the category of “modernist wife”.’
The full details are as follows:
Julie Bates (Trinity College Dublin): ‘Suzanne Was Very Vocal . . . against Marriage’: Unhappy Fictional Marriages by Beckett and Dumesnil
Dúnlaith Bird (Université Sorbonne Paris Nord): ‘Je l’ai faite, refaite, refaite encore’: Suzanne Dumesnil, Fuguing Mistresses, and Portmanteau Wives
Georgina Nugent (University College Cork): Alice B. Toklas and Modernist Wife Writing
The session takes place on Friday, 9 January 2026 from 10:15 to 11:30 at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, Room 205D
The Beckett Review 
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