Narratives of Community: American Women's "Story Books"

While James Joyce's Dubliners (1926) is often credited as the first "story book," or collection of linked short stories reading like a novel, and while Sherwood Anderson claimed that he had invented the short story sequence with Winesburg, Ohio (1919), Sarah Orne Jewett's The Country of the Pointed Firs (1896) predates them both. Since the appearance of Jewett's collection, which presents a series of linked sketches of the inhabitants of a once-prosperous shipping village through the eyes of a summer visitor, this form of narrative has appealed particularly to women writers who often use it to construct communities in fiction. Papers that explore American women's story books are invited for this panel. Theoretical approaches might begin with Sandra Zagarell's "Narrative of Community: The Identification of a Genre," but all approaches to the genre are welcome. Possible collections might include, but are not limited to, Flannery O'Connor's A Good Man Is Hard To Find, Ali!
 ce Walker's In Love and Trouble, Louise Erdrich's Love Medicine, Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club, or Diane Glancy's Pushing the Bear. Please send one-page abstracts by 12 January 2006 to Roxanne Harde, University of Alberta, Augustana Faculty, rharde_at_augustana.ca.

The third SSAWW Conference is scheduled for November 8 - November 11, 2006, at the Sheraton Society Hill in Philadelphia.

Dr. Roxanne Harde, Assistant Professor
University of Alberta, Augustana Faculty
4901 - 46 Avenue, Camrose, Alberta T4V 2R3
206 North Hall, 780-679-1579

         ==========================================================
              From the Literary Calls for Papers Mailing List
                        CFP_at_english.upenn.edu
                         Full Information at
                     http://cfp.english.upenn.edu
         or write Jennifer Higginbotham: higginbj_at_english.upenn.edu
         ==========================================================
Received on Wed Jul 13 2005 - 07:38:17 EDT