American Literature Association Conference – San Francisco (May 26-29, 2016)

The Catharine Maria Sedgwick Society invites proposals for two panels at ALA.

Session #1 (15 to 20-minute papers): “Catharine Sedgwick’s New England”

A New England Tale (1822) was one of the first of Catharine Maria Sedgwick’s novels to be republished and garner critical attention. Since its recovery, there has been increased interest in other early American women writers, such as Hannah Foster, Susannah Rowson, and Lydia Maria Child. There also has been a surge of interest in the American novel written before 1820. This panel seeks scholarship on “Catharine Sedgwick’s New England” that situates the work of Sedgwick and other American women writers in the increasingly global public sphere of the early nineteenth century. Papers might address (but certainly aren’t limited to) the transatlantic genre of the “village sketch”; New England religion in the context of the Second Great Awakening and global encounters with non-Christian peoples (particularly relevant in the current political climate); Sedgwick and the rise of the early American novel and/or the rise of the American short story; women writers in public; writing about New England as a response to (or retreat from) the responsibilities of nationhood; relationships between early American authors and their European friends/family/publishers/correspondents.