On behalf of the Willa Cather Foundation, I am seeking proposals for a panel on Willa Cather and Gender at the SSAWW Conference in Philadelphia from November 5-9, 2025.
September 2025 marks the 100th anniversary of the publication of Cather’s novel The Professor’s House, which, like a number of her novels, is told almost exclusively from the points of view of male characters (Godfrey St. Peter and Tom Outland). Furthermore, their views of women are arguably misogynistic. While papers on The Professor’s House are welcome, this panel is open to a broad variety of approaches and topics and approaches to gender in relation to Cather, her works, and her relationship to literary history. What is the place of a novel like The Professor’s House in a course on women’s writing? How does Cather fit—or not—in relation to a literary history of women’s writing? How should feminist critics approach the works of a woman writer who was not herself feminist? How might queer and trans approaches illuminate Cather and her works?
Please send abstracts (250 words) and brief bio sketches to Melissa Homestead as e-mail attachments by February 23, 2025.