OXFORD - Perhaps it's to experience, during the University of Mississippi's summer lull, Oxford as quiet as it was in William Faulkner's day.

Maybe it's an homage to the object of their affection, who famously detested air conditioning.

However the midsummer dates came about, Ole Miss lures devotees of Oxford's favorite son," return every July for the Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference.

"People are here from all over the world - Japan, Australia, Russia, Canada, all parts of the U.S., and everywhere," said Ann Abadie, associate director of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture and the conference's longtime organizer.

The biggest change in the conference over its 37-year history is a change of faces, Abadie said.

"When we first started the conference, there were still a lot of people alive who knew Faulkner - friends of his and family - but now most of those people are gone," she said. "Now we have a lot of younger scholars on the panels."

This year's theme is "Faulkner and Film." The event began Sunday and ends Thursday, packing into the interim dozens of lectures, workshops, panel discussions, receptions, tours and, of course, several films birthed on Faulkner's typewriter.

Anita Burns, a retired intensive-care nurse from Austin, Texas, is one of those compelled to make the pilgrimage.

"I just love Faulkner, and I've been to this several times. I love coming to Mississippi, and Oxford is a beautiful small town," she said.

Burns said the lures are being on Faulkner's "postage stamp of native soil" and the chance to be around other people intimately familiar with his writing.

"I think it's both. It's to help my understanding, and it's to see how other people interpret him," she said.

For Rochelle Zohn of McLean, Va., the conference embodies a chance to experience a national treasure.

"Just as you visit the Grand Canyon and all the other things, shouldn't you visit things ... like writers' origins - and then read them?" she said.

Conference presenter Terrell Tebbets, a professor at Arkansas' Lyon College, is attending his 15th Famp&Y conference.

"Faulkner readers, like members of the Catholic Church, have a Vatican, and this is it," he said. "We come here and share the faith, as it were."

Contact Errol Castens at (662) 281-1069 or errol.castens@djournal.com.