Call for Papers: The Histories and Futures of Harriet Beecher Stowe
for the Society for the Study of American Women Writers Conference, November 6-9, 2025

Sponsored by the Stowe Society

Deadline for submissions: February 17, 2025

The SSAWW conference theme, “Understanding Histories, Imagining Futures,” is an apt description of the work of Harriet Beecher Stowe, a writer equally comfortable offering readers her interpretation of the past and promulgating a vision for the future. In both her fiction (e.g., The Minister’s Wooing) and her nonfiction (e.g., Woman in Sacred History), Stowe routinely dives into the near or distant past as a means of understanding the present. Whether she is offering practical advice for building an idealized home life, as in The American Woman’s Home, imagining America’s racial future, as in her most famous work, or writing for future adults (that is, children), Stowe is unafraid to offer advice or, indeed, commands, for how to ensure a future that fits her moral and political vision. For this panel, we invite proposals for papers that illuminate Stowe’s interpretations of the past and/or in the future in any of her work as well as papers that consider Stowe’s own future inside and outside the academy.

If interested, please submit your paper title, a 250-300 word abstract, your contact information, and a 60-word biography to Allison Speicher (speichera@easternct.edu) no later than 2/17/25. Submissions will be reviewed promptly.