Concise Collections on Teaching Eighteenth-Century Women Writers and Artists, a new series launched by ABO: Interdisciplinary Journal on Women in the Arts 1650-1830, seeks proposals of 300 to 500 words for brief essays on

Teaching Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea

guest editor, Jennifer Keith

This is a pivotal moment for studying Anne Finch. Until recently, teachers and researchers have been hampered by the lack of a scholarly edition of her work; now, with the newly published two-volume Cambridge Edition of the Works of Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea (2019–2021), her works are available in print and e-book formats. Libraries holding e-book formats of the edition can provide students with access to studying a greater range of Finch’s work than hitherto possible. This Concise Collection invites proposals that advance the teaching of Finch’s work at the undergraduate and graduate levels while generating new scholarship derived from or fueling these teaching experiences. 

            We especially seek proposals focused on teaching works by Finch other than those regularly anthologized. Essays may focus on a combination of description of a teaching strategy or course design or assignment, with critical discussion that substantiates and informs the pedagogical strategy. The key consideration is how a specific work or aspect of Finch’s work can be taught most effectively in different university and college contexts. We encourage collaborative and innovative forms of discourse on teaching. Essays can be experimental, practical, methodological, theoretical, and/or exploratory.

            Whether focusing on a strategy for teaching a single work or group of short works by Finch, submissions that locate their approach or module within the context of a commonly taught course or framing will be especially valuable.Contributions might explore—but are not limited to— teaching Finch’s work/s in an introduction to poetry, a British literature or period survey, a survey of women’s drama or early modern drama, or courses or parts of courses focused on new formalism, women writers and feminist and gender studies, histories of the passions, or eco-critical literature. Proposals may also include ways of using the Cambridge Edition with the supplementary open-access Anne Finch Digital Archive. 

Submission Information  Submit proposals of 300 to 500 words by June 15, 2022, to Jennifer Keith: jmkeith@uncg.edu. Complete essays, of approximately 3,500 words, will be due by December 1, 2022, and should be submitted for peer review to the ABO platform—https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/cgi/submit.cgi?context=abo. The collection “Teaching Anne Finch” will appear in the fall 2023 issue of ABO. Articles should be formatted in current Modern Language Association Style, using double-spacing, parenthetical citations, and explanatory endnotes.

Contact email  jmkeith@uncg.edu.

The Series  ABO’s Concise Collections seek to promote the teaching of eighteenth-century women writers and artists who remain seriously underrepresented in university classrooms, beyond a small collection of now-canonical authors. These collections provide a space for ongoing conversations about the practices and issues of teaching our subjects.  

About ABO  ABO is a peer-reviewed online journal started in 2011, edited by Laura Runge, and indexed by MLA and DOAJ:  http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/abo/. ABO’s pedagogy papers are our most frequently downloaded publications, and some, like Emily Dowd-Arrow’s 2016 article on teaching historical rape cultures, have become foundational in pedagogy scholarship in our period.