Writers Without Borders: US and Canadian Women Authors

deadline for submissions: 
September 30, 2016
full name / name of organization: 
Rita Bode, NeMLA Convention
contact email: 

NeMLA Convention, Baltimore (23-26/03/2017)

In her study of L. M. Montgomery (1874-1942) in the “Extraordinary Canadians” series, Canadian author Jane Urquhart invokes comparisons of L. M. Montgomery’s life and work to that of her near-contemporary American peers, Edith Wharton (1862-1937), Willa Cather (1873-1947), and Mary Wilkins Freeman (1852-1930), among others. While the transatlantic connection among women writers is receiving increasing critical attention, the literary relationships among American and Canadian women writers offer a relatively recent area for scholarly explorations of the influences and alignments crossing North America.

This panel seeks comparative studies of American and Canadian women writers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that address a range of topics such as the handling of young and/or older female protagonists, representations of nature, depictions of regions, and other relevant subjects. In addition to Montgomery and the authors mentioned above, other possible authors to consider might include Montgomery and other American regionalists, such as Sarah Orne Jewett; Cather and Margaret Laurence; Alcott and her Canadian counterparts.

Please submit 250-300 word abstracts and brief by bio September 30th through the NeMLA submission page: https://www.cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/16487

Applicants are not required to be NeMLA members at the time of submission but accepted speakers will have to become members by December 1st, 2016.

For queries, please email rbode@trentu.ca