Call for submissions: Cather Studies 17: Willa Cather Across Regions

Cather’s novel The Professor’s House, the publication centennial of which is in 2025, traverses regions in action and in memory: a Midwestern university town in an unnamed state on Lake Michigan, cattle and mesa country in Northern New Mexico, and the grasslands of Kansas. The titular professor recalls the difficulty of explaining Lake Michigan to his friends in France: “it is altogether different. It is a sea, and yet it is not salt. It is blue, but quite another blue. Yes, there are clouds and mists and sea-gulls, but—I don’t know, il est toujours plus naïf.”

The editor of Cather Studies, which is published by the University of Nebraska Press, seeks papers from scholars at all career stages on Cather’s relationship to region, broadly construed, and especially papers that propose to read across region in Cather’s works and life. Although the volume theme is keyed to the 2025 Willa Cather International Seminar theme, submissions are not restricted to those who presented and are welcome on any of Cather’s works, not just The Professor’s House. Possible topics may include, but are not limited to:

Blue humanities and Lake Michigan as an inland sea

Bioregionalsm and sustainability

Industrialization and the Rustbelt

Literary regionalism: Cather’s relationship to earlier literary regionalism and to regional traditions of the twentieth century

Geospatial humanities: using digital tools to explore region in Cather’s life and works

Settler colonial studies: displacement of indigenous peoples, land grant universities

Ecocriticsm and environmental humanities

The rise of cultural anthropology and Cather’s understanding of place

Submissions are due by February 15, 2026. Essays of varying lengths will be considered. Essays will undergo double-blind peer review. Authors of essays accepted for publication will need to format citations according the Chicago Manual of Style. However, any academic citation style is welcome at the time of submission. Authors wishing to include illustrations will be responsible for obtaining high resolution digital copies and obtaining necessary permissions.

Submissions and queries concerning submissions should be directed to Melissa Homestead, Professor of English, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, at mhomestead2@unl.edu