About University of Idaho and Hemingway
About U of I & Hemingway
In research and publication, in the classroom, in media outreach, at conferences and festivals and in creative writing, connection between the University of Idaho and Hemingway continues to be a source of inspiration.
Ernest Hemingway is one of the most read, taught and written about 20th century American writers in colleges and universities. He is also one of the most popular writers in all languages worldwide: He is 34th on the United Nations' list of the world’s 50 most translated authors, with 1,337 translations in print.
Hemingway is the single most popular American writer in China and Japan, and he is among the top 10 most popular American writers worldwide. The university and the state are fortunate that Hemingway made Idaho his final home.
The Ernest Hemingway Foundation
The Ernest Hemingway Foundation was established in 1965 by Mary Hemingway, Ernest’s widow, "for the purposes of awakening, sustaining an interest in, promoting, fostering, stimulating, supporting, improving and developing literature and all forms of literary composition and expression." The foundation manages the rights to Hemingway’s posthumously published and remaining unpublished work.
In 1980, a group of Hemingway scholars held a conference near the John F. Kennedy Library (the principal repository of Hemingway manuscripts and memorabilia) and formed The Hemingway Society.
The society’s work has emphasized "the promotion, assistance and coordination of scholarship and studies relating to the works and life of the late Ernest Hemingway." The society publishes The Hemingway Review, a peer-reviewed scholarly journal published twice a year, and organizes international conferences every other year in sites of importance to Hemingway — from Key West to Paris. The society has over 650 members — college and university professors, book collectors, journalists, Hemingway enthusiasts and more — in 27 nations.
After Mary Hemingway’s death in 1986, Ernest's sons, Patrick and John Hemingway, invited the society to assume the resources, duties and functions of the Ernest Hemingway Foundation and the two organizations merged to become the Ernest Hemingway Foundation and Society.
The University of Idaho Hemingway Alliance dates to the early 1990s, when the foundation approached the University of Idaho about sponsoring The Hemingway Review. In 1993, through a collaboration between the Department of English and the University of Idaho Press, the first issue was published.
The Hemingway Review celebrates its 36th anniversary in 2017. It is edited by Suzanne del Gizzo, an associate professor of English at Chestnut Hill College in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and a clinical professor of English at the University of Idaho. Del Gizzo has published two edited volumes on Ernest Hemingway — Ernest "Hemingway in Context" with Debra A. Moddelmog (Cambridge UP) and "Ernest Hemingway’s 'The Garden of Eden': Twenty-Five Years of Criticism" with Frederic J. Svoboda (Kent UP) — as well as more than 20 articles on aspects of American literature.
Today, the journal enjoys a print run of 700 impressions, out-circulating many academic journals with more general subject matter. The Hemingway Review’s placement with online research databases — including Project Muse, Ebsco Host, Gale Infotrac and Proquest — carries UI’s reputation for sponsored research in the humanities into virtually every college and university library or state-certified public library in the United States. Highly regarded in the field of American literature, The Hemingway Review has been recognized by the Council of Learned Journals for significant editorial achievement and excellence in design.
The connection between the University of Idaho and the Review further strengthened in 1996 when the university joined the Ernest Hemingway Foundation and Society in hosting the biennial international Hemingway conference, which was attended by more than 300 Hemingway scholars from around the world. The University of Idaho Press published a volume of nineteen essays based on papers presented at the conference ("Hemingway and the Natural World," 1999), a book that was noticed by the Chronicle of Higher Education as a pioneering effort in ecocriticism. In 2004, the Department of English began a partnership with EHFS and PEN New England in supporting the PEN/Hemingway Award for a first work of fiction. In addition, UI’s English faculty members have been involved in the planning and implementation of the annual Hemingway Festival, which is held in Moscow, Idaho.