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The 31st Annual Meeting of the Western Literature Association was held from October 2-5, 1996, in Lincoln, Nebraska. Once again, the conference organizers graciously allowed space for a complete panel on the work of Katherine Anne Porter. The panel was titled "Katherine Anne Porter: The West and Beyond," indicating that some aspects of Porter's work partake of a Western experience, but that she ranges far beyond any regional appellation.

Colleen Tremonte of Michigan State University presented "Mirrorshades: Flashback and Repetition in Porter." She examined relationships between the two art forms of filmmaking and writing, discussing such concepts as a film's grammar and syntax. She demonstrated that "associative memory" is a Modernist concept equally familiar to film historians and literary critics, and she outlined Porter's use of other filmic techniques such as voice-over and montage.

Thomas Austenfeld of Drury College presented "Mirandas in Germany: Two Girls of the Golden West Meet the Nazis." He proposed that the shared Western upbringing of Porter and Jean Stafford (in Texas and Colorado, respectively) helps explain the two authors' responses to Nazi Germany, which they encountered during their visits to Europe in the thirties. Western values predisposed their choices of narrative perspective, axiomatic values, and eventual judgment of the experience.

Janis Stout of Texas A & M University presented "Katherine Anne Porter and Mark Twain at the Circus." She compared chapter 22 from Huckleberry Finn with "The Circus," using Bakhtin's notion of the "carnivalesque" as a theoretical basis. Miranda's and Huck's childlike perceptions of the crowds at the circus give rise to interpretations of such questions as identity, masking and mirroring, and existential unease.