Memory, Myth, and Meaning: Cather in Dialogue with America 250

Willa Cather Spring Conference | Thursday, June 4 - Saturday, June 6, 2026 

This year marks the centennial of My Mortal Enemy, one of Cather’s least affirmative works and one not produced in the Cather Scholarly Edition (translation: much important work remains to be done!)  We invite papers on new approaches to My Mortal Enemy, including but not limited to the following considerations of style, form, provenance, and themes:

• Is MME a short novel, a long story, or something else? 
• MME in relation to Cather’s other works
• Unreliable narrators and ambiguity
• Critical reception and the novel’s origins
• The politics of marriage
• Disinheritance and economic precarity
• Caregiving and the medical humanities
• Living under “the ruthless Poindexters,” violations of the social contract

We also invite papers considering Cather on the occasion of America’s Semiquincentennial, including but not limited to the following:

• Crafting identity – individuals, regions, and nations
• Work and technology
• Peopling and migration
• Politics and power
• Aesthetics and symbolism
• America in the world
• Environment and geography
• American mythmaking 
• Cather and legacy building – memorialization, museums, adaptation, canonization
• Cather in public spaces and spectacles – libraries, railroads, parades, award ceremonies

Proposals of no more than 500 words should describe individual papers or presentations approximately twenty minutes long.  Innovative formats are encouraged. Abstracts, along with a short bio, your contact information and institutional affiliation, should be submitted to Rachel Olsen, Director of Education and Engagement, via the SpringConferenceProposalForm by March 2, 2026.  Responses to proposals will be sent by mid-March. Questions may be submitted to Rachel Olsen or Tim Bintrim, Academic Advisor of the 2026 Spring Conference, at TBintrim@francis.edu.