CFP: 2021 SSAWW Triennial Conference “American Women Writers: Ecologies, Survival, Change”
November 4-7th, 2021 Baltimore, Maryland
For the 2021 SSAWW Triennial Conference in Baltimore, we invite proposals on the topic of “American Women Writers: Ecologies, Survival, Change.”
Proposals are welcome on subjects from early American literature to the literature of the present. Proposals might engage with these topics but are not limited to them:
I. Studies of Writing that
- Examines the systems in which we live, labor, and love
- Fosters survival and envisions change
- Illuminates crises that make the ecologies that constitute our worlds visible or hyper-visible
- Represents existing ecologies and imagines alternative ecologies
- Brings together metaphors of disease, national peril, and anti-immigration, especially 19th and 21st century writing by women
- Resists nativist discourses of contagion and national peril, especially 19th- and 21st century by immigrant women
- Represents systemic barriers to social justice and routes to achieving it
- Envisions intersectionality as forms of ecology
- Exposes systemic gender inequities
- Connects racism and racial and gender bias to physical and cultural health issues
- Highlights memoir and letters as expressions of relationships between individual lives
- Explores the role of writing in emotional recovery from systemic oppression and/or illness
- Addresses women’s engagement with ecologies of print culture and beyond: periodicals, newspapers, magazines, pamphlets, books, the internet, etc.
- Opposes epistemicide
- Explores ecologies of the archive: what is accessible, sustained, recreated, generated, perpetuated, and/or perpetrated in archival and recovery processes; where do women writers live, survive, and thrive?
II. Proposals on Teaching and Pedagogy that
- explore the ecologies of academic institutions and the role of women scholars within (and against) them)
- address literary canons as ecologies and propose healthier, more diverse ecologies of literature and literary study
- model ways to by-pass anachronistic approaches and create new lenses for student research/scholarly production, etc.
- move beyond academic monocultures by engaging the intersections of art, music, literature, etc. for a more interdisciplinary approach
- examine the predominant methodologies of discrete historical eras and their presence in the work of women writers and artists
III. Public Humanities
- Performance
- Scholarship as social engagement
- Teaching outside of the academic classroom
- Creating partnerships for public humanities by bridging the university and the public sphere
IV. Pedagogies and Scholarship in the Digital Era
- Surviving and thriving pedagogically in the digital era
- Teaching via distanced learning
- Using digital tools, assignments, and projects in the classroom
- Adapting to the move to online curricula
- Showcasing research projects and student work in digital modes
- Devising models of resistance, politics, and economic compensation in the digital age
- Shepherding projects from initial idea stage to fully-formed digital works
V. Digital Humanities
- Building and sustaining DH projects from grant funding to long-term sustainability
- Creating networks for digital projects beyond the university
- Developing the relationship between recovery work and digital platforms
- Making it count: how to construct a digital portfolio for research and promotion
VI. Professional Development
- Professional challenges within universities or the discipline (e.g., how to “count” digital work toward promotion and tenure, reconsidering the value of edited volumes, etc.)
- From PhD candidate to colleague: demystifying the academic job market
- The non-academic job search and the role of humanities outside th academy
- From proposal and beyond: understanding academic publishing in the twenty-first century
Please send your submissions as PDFs to ssaww.conferences@gmail.com
Deadline: March 8, 2021
Individual paper proposals: Interested participants will be asked to provide a tentative paper title as well as a proposal of approximately 250 to 300 words.
Pre-formed panel proposals: Interested participants will be asked to provide a tentative panel title and contact information for the session chair. In addition, we will need a tentative title and a brief proposal of approximately 250 to 300 words for each participant. Note that panels typically consist of three, but no more than four, presenters who are each allotted between fifteen and twenty minutes to present their work with time remaining for discussion.
Pre-formed roundtable proposals: Interested participants will be asked to provide a tentative roundtable title and the contact information for the session chair. In addition, we will need a title and brief proposal of approximately 150 to 250 words for each participant. Note that roundtables typically consist of five to six participants allocated around six to eight minutes to present their work with time remaining for discussion.
Workshop and exhibition proposals: Interested participants will be asked to provide a tentative session title as well as a brief workshop/exhibition overview of approximately 150 to 250 words. There is an optional section devoted to additional session information to provide space and time considerations, contact information for additional contributors, etc.
Special sessions (for SSAWW affiliate organizations): SSAWW affiliate organizations will be asked to provide a tentative panel title and contact information of the session chair. In addition, we will need a tentative title and a brief proposal of approximately 250 to 300 words for each participant. Note that panels typically consist of three presenters allotted fifteen to twenty minutes to present their work with time remaining for discussion.
For any special sessions (such as a syllabus/assignment exchange, film screening, etc.) that does not follow this format, please contact Dr. Ellen Gruber Garvey directly at ssaww.conferences@gmail.com with a query.
For complete sessions, please ensure that notifications are sent to potential participants by early January at the latest to allow those whose proposals are not accepted for the panel or roundtable to submit individual paper proposals by the submission deadline of February 22, 2021. Chairs will be asked to provide an abstract for the panel as a whole (approximately 250 to 300 words) as well as the contact information and a brief biographical statement (no longer than 60 words) for each participant, each individual abstract, and any A/V requirements (please note that while we do recognize the need for support for some presentations, there are always high costs associated with securing this equipment that we would like to limit).
Participants are allowed to appear on the final program no more than twice in an effort to allow as many individuals as possible the opportunity to participate. Participants will be listed in the program if they are presenting a paper, participating in a roundtable or workshop, or serving as the chair for a session. Participating in two different roles in the same session (e.g., as the chair and a panelist) would therefore count as two listings in the program. Please note that it is not permissible to present on two panels, though individuals can present as part of a panel and a roundtable session.
For help regarding any technical issues with submitting proposals or questions about the participation guidelines, please contact Dr. Sara Kosiba, Conference Associate for the 2021 conference, at ssaww.conferences@gmail.com; she is also the contact person for scheduling, A/V requests, etc.
For questions regarding the conference itself, please contact the Vice President of Organizational Matters, Dr. Maria Sanchez via E-mail at ssaww.vporganizationalmatters@gmail.com
Note that selected participants must be members of SSAWW no later than June 1, 2021 in order to secure their place on the conference program.
We look forward to receiving proposals for the many thoughtful and informative sessions that our SSAWW members always produce and to seeing you in Baltimore for yet another powerful SSAWW Triennial Conference.
For conference updates and additional information about the Society for the Study of American Women Writers, please visit the 2021 SSAWW Triennial Conference tab on our main menu
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