Posted: November 13, 2024
Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century British Women Writers Conference (BWWC 2025)
TRANSFORMATIONS
Sioux Falls, South Dakota, May 15–17, 2025
Hosted by South Dakota State University and The University of South Dakota
Deadline for submission of proposals: December 15, 2024
For more information about the conference, including submission guidelines and a link to the submission form, please visit the BWWC 2025 website at https://bwwc2025.wixsite.com/bwwc2025. Questions about the conference may be directed to [email protected].
Keynote Speakers:
Dr. Lisa Hager, University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee at Waukesha
Dr. Megan Peiser, Oakland University
Dr. Kerry Sinanan, University of Winnipeg
Call for Proposals
On behalf of the Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century British Women Writers Association (BWWA), the organizers of the thirty-third annual Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century British Women Writer’s Conference (BWWC 2025) invite proposals for both individual presentations and complete panels focusing on the theme “Transformations” as it relates to texts produced by women, nonbinary, and gender nonconforming writers within global and transatlantic contexts during the long eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The organizers wish to consider how these texts represent, reflect, and embody transformation, as well as how they have proved and continue to prove transformative. How might the study of these texts generate transformation within the classroom, academic programs and disciplines, educational institutions, and academia at large? How might this work contribute to social, political, and ecological transformation? What transformations must occur to ensure that the conditions of academic work are just, humane, ethical, and equitable?
Proposals might engage with the theme of transformation as it relates to the following topics:
The Literary: representation, writing, reading, genre, form, criticism
The Textual: adaptation, digitization, orality, printing and binding, editing and publishing
Identities: gender, including transgender, nonbinary, and gender nonconforming identities, sexuality, race, nation, class, ethnicity, religion
Minds and Bodies: disability, creativity, autonomy, mobility, wellness and wellbeing, mental health, reproduction, maternity, disease, age and aging, sex, violence, trauma, death, dreams, enlightenment, disillusionment
The Social: tastes, fashions, manners, leisure, family, courtship, friendship
The Political: representation, recognition, human rights, civil rights, reproductive rights, land rights, land back, animal rights, resistance, revolution, liberation, abolition, emancipation, agency
The Global: economies, war, travel, immigration, colonization, enslavement, climate
Nature: plants, animals, insects, gardens, landscapes, weather
The Supernatural: spiritualism, ghosts, monsters, the Gothic
The Material: objects, textiles, crafts, architecture, art
Academia and Academic Life: pedagogy, institutions, institutional support, labor, labor conditions, balance of work roles and work/life, care work, the profession, research, scholarship, academic societies, academic conferences
Proposals on other topics related to transformation, as well as topics that fall outside of the scope of the conference theme, are also welcome.
Proposals for Undergraduate Research Panels
BWWC 2025 organizers invite proposals for a limited number of preformed panels featuring undergraduate research that fits within the parameters of the conference. Proposals for these preformed panels must be submitted by a faculty sponsor who will serve as panel moderator and mentor for the undergraduate students attending the conference. Organizers are particularly interested in undergraduate research panels that showcase innovative pedagogical strategies. Undergraduate research panels must include at least three but no more than five undergraduate presenters. A panel with five presenters should engage a roundtable format with brief presentations that will leave sufficient time for discussion. Faculty members who travel with undergraduate students to the conference must take full responsibility for their institutions’ requirements regarding undergraduate travel to off-campus events.
Posted: September 21, 2024
Call for Papers for Special Issue of Women’s Writing: British Nonconformist Women Writers, 1660-1840
Between 1660 and 1840, a large number of women writers emerged from within British communities of religious nonconformity and dissent associated primarily with the Baptists, Independents (Congregationalists), Presbyterians, Quakers, and, by the latter part of the eighteenth century, the Methodists and the Unitarians. These women embraced a wide spectrum of doctrinal systems, from Calvinism and Arminianism to Arianism and Socinianism, with variations in between. Despite differences in their geographical, social, educational, and religious experiences, these women were devoted to the act of writing, leaving behind a considerable body of manuscript and printed works reflective of nearly every popular genre of the century: private diaries and spiritual journals, conversion narratives, spiritual autobiographies, prose meditations and reflections, private correspondence and formal printed letters, religious and political tracts, doctrinal discourses, hymns and poems, and, by the end of the century, travel journals, conduct books, moral fiction, and even novels. These works were not only written but, in some cases, also printed and sold by nonconformist women. In some instances, their writings only circulated in manuscript within scribal coteries. Even though these women wrote within established literary genres, they were not averse to creating their own traditions and patterns of writing and publishing that, in many instances, remain outside the accepted canonical ideals of the period. This special issue seeks to recover and illuminate the lives and writings of nonconformist women and situate them more accurately within the literary and religious history of the long eighteenth century and beyond.
Essays may focus on (but are not restricted to) such topics as
Guest Editor: Timothy Whelan, Professor Emeritus, Georgia Southern University
Abstracts of 300 words and a short biographical notice should be sent to Timothy Whelan at [email protected] by 31 December 2024. Essays, if accepted, will be approximately 8000 words (including notes) and due for peer review by 1 October 2025 with publication in the journal designed for fall 2026.
Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century British Women Writers Conference (BWWC 2025)
TRANSFORMATIONS
Sioux Falls, South Dakota, May 15–17, 2025
Hosted by South Dakota State University and The University of South Dakota
Deadline for submission of proposals: December 15, 2024
For more information about the conference, including submission guidelines and a link to the submission form, please visit the BWWC 2025 website at https://bwwc2025.wixsite.com/bwwc2025. Questions about the conference may be directed to [email protected].
Keynote Speakers:
Dr. Lisa Hager, University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee at Waukesha
Dr. Megan Peiser, Oakland University
Dr. Kerry Sinanan, University of Winnipeg
Call for Proposals
On behalf of the Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century British Women Writers Association (BWWA), the organizers of the thirty-third annual Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century British Women Writer’s Conference (BWWC 2025) invite proposals for both individual presentations and complete panels focusing on the theme “Transformations” as it relates to texts produced by women, nonbinary, and gender nonconforming writers within global and transatlantic contexts during the long eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The organizers wish to consider how these texts represent, reflect, and embody transformation, as well as how they have proved and continue to prove transformative. How might the study of these texts generate transformation within the classroom, academic programs and disciplines, educational institutions, and academia at large? How might this work contribute to social, political, and ecological transformation? What transformations must occur to ensure that the conditions of academic work are just, humane, ethical, and equitable?
Proposals might engage with the theme of transformation as it relates to the following topics:
The Literary: representation, writing, reading, genre, form, criticism
The Textual: adaptation, digitization, orality, printing and binding, editing and publishing
Identities: gender, including transgender, nonbinary, and gender nonconforming identities, sexuality, race, nation, class, ethnicity, religion
Minds and Bodies: disability, creativity, autonomy, mobility, wellness and wellbeing, mental health, reproduction, maternity, disease, age and aging, sex, violence, trauma, death, dreams, enlightenment, disillusionment
The Social: tastes, fashions, manners, leisure, family, courtship, friendship
The Political: representation, recognition, human rights, civil rights, reproductive rights, land rights, land back, animal rights, resistance, revolution, liberation, abolition, emancipation, agency
The Global: economies, war, travel, immigration, colonization, enslavement, climate
Nature: plants, animals, insects, gardens, landscapes, weather
The Supernatural: spiritualism, ghosts, monsters, the Gothic
The Material: objects, textiles, crafts, architecture, art
Academia and Academic Life: pedagogy, institutions, institutional support, labor, labor conditions, balance of work roles and work/life, care work, the profession, research, scholarship, academic societies, academic conferences
Proposals on other topics related to transformation, as well as topics that fall outside of the scope of the conference theme, are also welcome.
Proposals for Undergraduate Research Panels
BWWC 2025 organizers invite proposals for a limited number of preformed panels featuring undergraduate research that fits within the parameters of the conference. Proposals for these preformed panels must be submitted by a faculty sponsor who will serve as panel moderator and mentor for the undergraduate students attending the conference. Organizers are particularly interested in undergraduate research panels that showcase innovative pedagogical strategies. Undergraduate research panels must include at least three but no more than five undergraduate presenters. A panel with five presenters should engage a roundtable format with brief presentations that will leave sufficient time for discussion. Faculty members who travel with undergraduate students to the conference must take full responsibility for their institutions’ requirements regarding undergraduate travel to off-campus events.
Posted: September 21, 2024
Call for Papers for Special Issue of Women’s Writing: British Nonconformist Women Writers, 1660-1840
Between 1660 and 1840, a large number of women writers emerged from within British communities of religious nonconformity and dissent associated primarily with the Baptists, Independents (Congregationalists), Presbyterians, Quakers, and, by the latter part of the eighteenth century, the Methodists and the Unitarians. These women embraced a wide spectrum of doctrinal systems, from Calvinism and Arminianism to Arianism and Socinianism, with variations in between. Despite differences in their geographical, social, educational, and religious experiences, these women were devoted to the act of writing, leaving behind a considerable body of manuscript and printed works reflective of nearly every popular genre of the century: private diaries and spiritual journals, conversion narratives, spiritual autobiographies, prose meditations and reflections, private correspondence and formal printed letters, religious and political tracts, doctrinal discourses, hymns and poems, and, by the end of the century, travel journals, conduct books, moral fiction, and even novels. These works were not only written but, in some cases, also printed and sold by nonconformist women. In some instances, their writings only circulated in manuscript within scribal coteries. Even though these women wrote within established literary genres, they were not averse to creating their own traditions and patterns of writing and publishing that, in many instances, remain outside the accepted canonical ideals of the period. This special issue seeks to recover and illuminate the lives and writings of nonconformist women and situate them more accurately within the literary and religious history of the long eighteenth century and beyond.
Essays may focus on (but are not restricted to) such topics as
- the social, domestic, educational, religious, and literary writings of nonconformist women and the diversity of genres in which they wrote
- the ways in which the affiliations of these women within specific circles and larger denominations shaped their lives and careers and promoted (and possibly complicated) the preservation of their work and identities
- the innovative ways in which these women composed, circulated, published, and preserved their work
- the complicated afterlives many of these women experienced since the mid-nineteenth century in finding a proper home and appreciation within the larger context of women’s writing
Guest Editor: Timothy Whelan, Professor Emeritus, Georgia Southern University
Abstracts of 300 words and a short biographical notice should be sent to Timothy Whelan at [email protected] by 31 December 2024. Essays, if accepted, will be approximately 8000 words (including notes) and due for peer review by 1 October 2025 with publication in the journal designed for fall 2026.
Posted: August 29th, 2024
Women Writers and Translation
This special issue of Women’s Writing seeks to explore the multifaceted realm of women’s translation, spanning from the Middle Ages through the long nineteenth century. Over the past few decades, scholars have produced important insights on the worlds of women’s translation; however, much work remains. In the introduction to the 2023 special edition on translation studies in PMLA, A.E.B. Coldiron argues, “[T]ranslations constitute points of cultural and historical contact too generative to ignore” (419). Coldiron contends the future of literary studies demands scholars acknowledge the significance of translation: “Insisting on more-than-monolingual inquiry will necessarily yield literary criticism at once more precise and more expansive. Literary-cultural specialists who ignore translation, or who treat it instrumentally, do so at their peril, missing the bigger picture” (430). Given this imperative, our special issue seeks contributions that further the discussion of women writers and translation. We invite proposals for essays that engage with translation in a broad sense, including cultural translation, intralingual translation, and transmedia translation.
Topics may include but are not limited to:
Please submit abstracts of 250 to 300 words with a short biographical statement by 15 September 2024 using this link: https://forms.gle/ms9t2gdssY1NMyXR6
If accepted, author manuscripts will be due for peer review by 15 July 2025. Please note that acceptance of an abstract does not guarantee inclusion in the special issue. All manuscripts will undergo anonymized peer review. The special issue is expected to be published in summer 2026.
Guest editors: Karen Griscom, Community College of Rhode Island and Deborah Uman, Weber State University.
Women Writers and Translation
This special issue of Women’s Writing seeks to explore the multifaceted realm of women’s translation, spanning from the Middle Ages through the long nineteenth century. Over the past few decades, scholars have produced important insights on the worlds of women’s translation; however, much work remains. In the introduction to the 2023 special edition on translation studies in PMLA, A.E.B. Coldiron argues, “[T]ranslations constitute points of cultural and historical contact too generative to ignore” (419). Coldiron contends the future of literary studies demands scholars acknowledge the significance of translation: “Insisting on more-than-monolingual inquiry will necessarily yield literary criticism at once more precise and more expansive. Literary-cultural specialists who ignore translation, or who treat it instrumentally, do so at their peril, missing the bigger picture” (430). Given this imperative, our special issue seeks contributions that further the discussion of women writers and translation. We invite proposals for essays that engage with translation in a broad sense, including cultural translation, intralingual translation, and transmedia translation.
Topics may include but are not limited to:
- translation and gender theory
- mediating translations
- collaborative translation
- reception of translation
- patronage and translation
- paratextual material
- the materiality of translation
- women writers’ contributions to translation theory
- religious translation and commentary
- translation and history
- coterie publication of translation
- translation and prose fiction
- commercial profit and translation
- women’s education and translation
- authorship and originality
- anonymity and women’s translation
- networks around women translators
- translation and genre experimentation
- politics and translation
- translation and travel writing
- periodical publication of women’s translation
Please submit abstracts of 250 to 300 words with a short biographical statement by 15 September 2024 using this link: https://forms.gle/ms9t2gdssY1NMyXR6
If accepted, author manuscripts will be due for peer review by 15 July 2025. Please note that acceptance of an abstract does not guarantee inclusion in the special issue. All manuscripts will undergo anonymized peer review. The special issue is expected to be published in summer 2026.
Guest editors: Karen Griscom, Community College of Rhode Island and Deborah Uman, Weber State University.
Posted: August 30, 2024
Anglophone Riots: A Special Issue
“Riot” is an ambivalent term with complexly interlaced referents. In the domain of the social and the economic, “riot” refers to “a violent disturbance of the peace by a crowd,” as the OED reports. In the domain of the aesthetic, the term “riot” has long named “a roaringly successful show, performer, etc” as well as “a person […] or thing which is extremely popular or makes a big impression.” In contemporary anglophone vernacular, riot occurs in streets, in prisons, in protests, and in spaces of exceptional social combustibility—spaces that are nowadays increasingly “common” in three senses: frequent, popular, and public. Riot also occurs in aesthetic space: there are riots of color, riotous performances, riotous behavior, and riot as aesthetic judgement, as in, “the book was a riot.” Importantly, there were also riotous developments in language and pedagogy. This issue zeroes in on the varied meanings of riot in the period, as well as now. For Romanticists, the doubledness of this term is hidden in plain view in Wordsworth’s definition of poetry, which is as familiar as the air we breathe. “Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings,” Wordsworth writes, and from the perspective of 2024 we know too that the “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” is also one of the primary definitions of “riot.”
This special edition invites papers on the archive of late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century riot literature as it relates to an increasingly global anglophone world—by which we mean the motley archive of news, stories, poems, and plays that document bread riots, swing riots, dock riots, theater riots, colonial riots and more—is an important mediator of aesthetic practice during the Romantic period. “No one knows what the riot wants,” writes Alain Badiou in his recent book on the subject, to which we can add that because riot itself is amorphous and unpredictable, capturing it in poetry, on stage, or in the novel poses interesting aesthetic problems. Departing from social historian E.P. Thompson’s (and more recently Joshua Clover’s) periodizing conclusion that the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were a time when riots were ambient features of social and economic life, and, given the well-known fact that Wordsworth and Romantic-era writers in general were bravura upcyclers of “situations from common life,” this paper takes seriously the notion that reports of political “riot” were remediated through the literary into new and novel poetic and literary forms. From this perspective, it is possible to see the commons as a maker of Romanticism rather than the more conventional view in which the Romantics represent the commons.
Submission Instructions
Please submit your abstracts to Victoria Barnett-Woods by October 18th, 2024, at [email protected]
If accepted, author manuscripts will be due for peer review by May 31st, 2025.
Anglophone Riots: A Special Issue
“Riot” is an ambivalent term with complexly interlaced referents. In the domain of the social and the economic, “riot” refers to “a violent disturbance of the peace by a crowd,” as the OED reports. In the domain of the aesthetic, the term “riot” has long named “a roaringly successful show, performer, etc” as well as “a person […] or thing which is extremely popular or makes a big impression.” In contemporary anglophone vernacular, riot occurs in streets, in prisons, in protests, and in spaces of exceptional social combustibility—spaces that are nowadays increasingly “common” in three senses: frequent, popular, and public. Riot also occurs in aesthetic space: there are riots of color, riotous performances, riotous behavior, and riot as aesthetic judgement, as in, “the book was a riot.” Importantly, there were also riotous developments in language and pedagogy. This issue zeroes in on the varied meanings of riot in the period, as well as now. For Romanticists, the doubledness of this term is hidden in plain view in Wordsworth’s definition of poetry, which is as familiar as the air we breathe. “Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings,” Wordsworth writes, and from the perspective of 2024 we know too that the “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” is also one of the primary definitions of “riot.”
This special edition invites papers on the archive of late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century riot literature as it relates to an increasingly global anglophone world—by which we mean the motley archive of news, stories, poems, and plays that document bread riots, swing riots, dock riots, theater riots, colonial riots and more—is an important mediator of aesthetic practice during the Romantic period. “No one knows what the riot wants,” writes Alain Badiou in his recent book on the subject, to which we can add that because riot itself is amorphous and unpredictable, capturing it in poetry, on stage, or in the novel poses interesting aesthetic problems. Departing from social historian E.P. Thompson’s (and more recently Joshua Clover’s) periodizing conclusion that the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were a time when riots were ambient features of social and economic life, and, given the well-known fact that Wordsworth and Romantic-era writers in general were bravura upcyclers of “situations from common life,” this paper takes seriously the notion that reports of political “riot” were remediated through the literary into new and novel poetic and literary forms. From this perspective, it is possible to see the commons as a maker of Romanticism rather than the more conventional view in which the Romantics represent the commons.
Submission Instructions
Please submit your abstracts to Victoria Barnett-Woods by October 18th, 2024, at [email protected]
If accepted, author manuscripts will be due for peer review by May 31st, 2025.
Proudly powered by Weebly