On Sunday, August 5, Gary Richards, assistant professor of English, presented a paper, “Statues, Stories, and Hominy Grits: The Light in the Piazza, Grey Gardens, and the Complicating of the United States South in the Contemporary American Musical,” at the Association for Theatre in Higher Education Conference in Washington, D.C. The paper was part of a panel entitled “Broadway Musicals as Sites of American Identities and American Histories.”

Richards also was the University of Mary Washington’s chapter delegate to the Forty-Third Triennial Council of the Phi Beta Kappa Society, which met in Palm Beach, Fla., Thursday, August 2 through Saturday, August 4.

Gary Richards, assistant professor of English, presented a paper, “Where The Wind Done Gone Done Went: An Unauthorized Anniversary Parody,” at the Society for the Study of Southern Literature Conference in Nashville, Tenn., held Thursday, March 29 through Saturday, March 31. A member of the SSSL Executive Committee, Richards also was part of the four-person program committee for the conference.

Richards facilitated the Breakfast Book Club discussion of Tennessee Williams’s short fiction at the Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival in New Orleans, La., held Wednesday, March 21 through Sunday, March 25.