At least once in her lifetime, Catharine Maria Sedgwick traveled to Washington D.C. During her first known trip to the capital in January 1831, she visited the Supreme Court and the legislature, and through family friend Vice Pres. Martin Van Buren met President Jackson. She spoke with Justice Joseph Story; Chief Justice John Marshall called on her; and she was appalled by the vehemence of the Southerners' debate in the legislature as the nullification crisis emerged. In later years she wrote to various politicians about current issues (including Cassius Clay regarding his anti-slavery scheme).

Predicate
Issue 4: Reactions
Georgetown University
Deadline for Papers: February 14, 2014

predicate
(n.) the part of a sentence or clause containing what is said about a subject
(v.) to make an assertion; to postulate, suppose, assume

Produced by the Georgetown University English Graduate Student Association, Predicate aims to establish a forum for graduate students to share their research and writing: a place to work with other developing scholars.

Information about the conference can be found at
http://icasnorthamerica.wordpress.com/current-conference-2014/

The 2014 North American Critical Animal Studies Conference invites papers, presentations, and workshops from scholars, activists, and artists working on ethical and political issues concerning nonhuman animals. This year's venue in Houston, Texas offers a unique opportunity to investigate the intersections of oppression in a locale where many of the pressing concerns about bioengineering, pollution, and animal experimentation are centered and present.

Digital Utopias: Literary Space(s) in the Digital Age

Keynote Speaker: Dr. Brian Greenspan, Carleton University (Ottawa, Canada)
- Brian Greenspan is an Associate Professor in the Department of English and the Institute for Comparative Studies in Literature, Art and Culture at Carleton University. He is the founding Director of the Hyperlab, a Digital Humanities research centre, and inventor of the StoryTrek locative media authorware for games, interactive stories, and historical simulations. His research interests include utopian narratives, digital cultures, and the intersections between them.

Call for Papers: Abortion: The Unfinished Revolution

Conference: August 7-8, 2014 at the University of Prince Edward Island, Charlottetown, PEI, Canada

In the wake of the Library of America's publication of John Updike's Collected Stories, the John Updike Society invites paper proposals considering his work as a short story writer. Many of his stories contain protagonists that could be stand-ins for their author. What kinds of insights do they provide concerning Updike's unique relation to his milieu? To the natural world or other works of art? What about other short story writers? Has his work as a short story writer impacted the genre—or did the short story's generic conventions leave its mark on his writing in other genres? Is there a structural, thematic, or theoretical consistency that emerges in the art of his short story writing?