ASECS 2023 Women's Caucus Sessions
The 53rd Annual Meeting of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies will take place in St. Louis, Missouri, March 9–11, 2023, at the Hyatt Regency St. Louis at the Arch.
Note: To submit an abstract, please use this form. ASECS is using Google Forms this year to collect submissions. Session chairs will review submissions as in past years and forward their decisions to ASECS's Executive Director, Benita Blessing. More information about this new process can be found on the form linked above.
Please consider submitting an abstract to one of the Women's Caucus sessions:
1. 18th C Now! [Women's Caucus] Chairs: Kathleen Lubey and Stephanie Insley Hershinow
Let’s talk about how to justify, defend, and advocate for the relevance and value of teaching courses and filling faculty positions with expertise in historical periods.
107. Women and Books [Women's Caucus] Chairs: Heather Heckman-McKenna and Victoria Barnett-Woods
This panel will explore the relationships between women and books: women’s libraries, women book collectors, book makers, subscriptions, and any other aspect of how women and books intersect. Given that a great deal of book history surrounds men’s relationships to books, how might we build a new narrative around how women used, collected, and made books? And what new insights can we learn about women’s cultural history when we consider how women used books.
145. Roundtable: Reproductive Rights and Bodily Autonomy: The Eighteenth Century and Today, [Presidential Session] Chairs: Victoria Barnett-Woods and Nush Powell
This roundtable will consider the histories of women’s bodily autonomy and the institutional legacies that inform the current status of Roe v. Wade in the 21st-century United States. Our invitation to this timely panel is for participants to consider the following:
a. How have eighteenth-century literary and historical antecedents affected gender and sexuality norms?
b. What do the eighteenth-century archives and literature tell us about women’s reproductive rights?
c. How have race and class historically intersected with gender and sexuality to inflect reproductive rights discourses, laws, and norms and the ensuing consequences for individuals and or society?
Our roundtable also solicits invitations to scholars of the eighteenth century who may be impacted personally or professionally. For interested discussants, we ask that you consider the following:
a. What ramifications might changes to reproductive rights have for gender equity in the future workforce of the academy?
b. How might these laws have a disparate impact on the careers of female scholars, trans scholars, and others?
c. What are the implications or consequences these laws may have on students on both the graduate and undergraduate levels?
These are not exhaustive questions, as we hope for a wide range of perspectives and positions on this issue. Depending upon the number of abstract submissions, we hope to set up the roundtable with a hybrid format of 5–7-minute lightning discussions followed by a longer conversation with the attending audience. We mean for this roundtable to be an opportunity to share our urgent concerns, voice our opinions, and strategize together within the context of our investments in the eighteenth century and our pedagogy. Please submit 100-200-word abstracts.
This proposal is submitted with the collaboration and support of the ASECS Women’s Caucus, The Eliza Haywood Society, and the editors of Aphra Behn Online.
Note: To submit an abstract, please use this form. ASECS is using Google Forms this year to collect submissions. Session chairs will review submissions as in past years and forward their decisions to ASECS's Executive Director, Benita Blessing. More information about this new process can be found on the form linked above.
Please consider submitting an abstract to one of the Women's Caucus sessions:
1. 18th C Now! [Women's Caucus] Chairs: Kathleen Lubey and Stephanie Insley Hershinow
Let’s talk about how to justify, defend, and advocate for the relevance and value of teaching courses and filling faculty positions with expertise in historical periods.
107. Women and Books [Women's Caucus] Chairs: Heather Heckman-McKenna and Victoria Barnett-Woods
This panel will explore the relationships between women and books: women’s libraries, women book collectors, book makers, subscriptions, and any other aspect of how women and books intersect. Given that a great deal of book history surrounds men’s relationships to books, how might we build a new narrative around how women used, collected, and made books? And what new insights can we learn about women’s cultural history when we consider how women used books.
145. Roundtable: Reproductive Rights and Bodily Autonomy: The Eighteenth Century and Today, [Presidential Session] Chairs: Victoria Barnett-Woods and Nush Powell
This roundtable will consider the histories of women’s bodily autonomy and the institutional legacies that inform the current status of Roe v. Wade in the 21st-century United States. Our invitation to this timely panel is for participants to consider the following:
a. How have eighteenth-century literary and historical antecedents affected gender and sexuality norms?
b. What do the eighteenth-century archives and literature tell us about women’s reproductive rights?
c. How have race and class historically intersected with gender and sexuality to inflect reproductive rights discourses, laws, and norms and the ensuing consequences for individuals and or society?
Our roundtable also solicits invitations to scholars of the eighteenth century who may be impacted personally or professionally. For interested discussants, we ask that you consider the following:
a. What ramifications might changes to reproductive rights have for gender equity in the future workforce of the academy?
b. How might these laws have a disparate impact on the careers of female scholars, trans scholars, and others?
c. What are the implications or consequences these laws may have on students on both the graduate and undergraduate levels?
These are not exhaustive questions, as we hope for a wide range of perspectives and positions on this issue. Depending upon the number of abstract submissions, we hope to set up the roundtable with a hybrid format of 5–7-minute lightning discussions followed by a longer conversation with the attending audience. We mean for this roundtable to be an opportunity to share our urgent concerns, voice our opinions, and strategize together within the context of our investments in the eighteenth century and our pedagogy. Please submit 100-200-word abstracts.
This proposal is submitted with the collaboration and support of the ASECS Women’s Caucus, The Eliza Haywood Society, and the editors of Aphra Behn Online.