Call for Papers

From the Bonnie Jo Campbell Society

For the 2025 Society for the Study of American Women Writers Meeting

Website: https://studyamericanwomenwriters.org/events/2025-ssaww-conference/

Philadelphia, November 6-9, 2025

Proposed Session Topic:

Bonnie Jo Campbell and …

Bonnie Jo Campbell’s 2024 novel The Waters represents the rapid ascent of an important American writer in the early twenty-first century, garnering glowing reviews in the important media outlets. This began with her collection of short stories, American Salvage (2008), a finalist for the National Book Award. From a donkey farm in rural southwestern Michigan, Campbell dives deeply into the intricacies of rural life in post-Industrial America, focusing especially on issues of gender, violence, nature, and identity. Her work has been taught in dozens of classrooms and translated into a few other languages. Working in the traditions of Flannery O’Connor, Toni Morrison, and Carolyn Chute, Campbell sheds light on the darker places in the American countryside: the scrapyards and riverbanks, the livestock farms and the roadhouses. Last year, the first collection of essays on her work, Michigan Salvage, was published by Michigan State University Press. However, that volume represents only a starting place for the critical and scholarly exploration of Campbell’s meaning in both American and women’s literary traditions and in the contemporary literary moment. Given that we are still in the protean moment of the examination of her still-productive career, we have chosen to seek papers for panels or suggestions for a roundtable in a very general way, but with the notion of connecting Campbell’s work to longer themes or other writers studied by members of the SSAWW. Some suggestions

*Campbell and Men                                                   *Campbell and Literary Traditions

*Campbell and Women                                              *Campbell and Race

*Campbell and [some other writer]                       *Campbell and Once Upon a River (film)

*Campbell and Nature/Michigan/Midwest          *Campbell and Substance Abuse

*Campbell and Violence                                            *Campbell and the Short Story or Novel

*Campbell and Recovery                                           *Campbell and History

Pedagogical contributions are also sought.

Please send, abstracts, ideas, and responses to Edward Watts (wattse@msu.edu) by February 21, 2025