Society for the Study of American Women Writers

2025 Conference | 6–9 November 2025 | Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

“A Conversation about Coalition Building:

The Role of Women Author Societies in Times of Political Crisis”

organized by the Margaret Fuller Society

In 2025, in the spirit of Margaret Fuller’s nineteenth-century “conversations” and on the 25th anniversary of the founding of SSAWW, we seek to harness the power of community and of coalition building. We’re looking for speakers who have been or are currently leaders of women author societies—and for speakers who can voice perspectives about what emerging and/or marginalized scholars need from women author societies at this time. We want to host a roundtable conversation about what these author societies can do—and how we envision them shaping or re-shaping the field at a moment when educators—especially scholars and teachers whose work is amplifying the voices of women and people of color—are subject to budget cuts and to political censorship, elimination, investigation, and other violences.

Papers for this panel could engage the following questions, among others:

●      what roles should author societies have in times of political crisis?

●      in what ways should we work beyond “the author” in our organizations?

●      how can women author societies strengthen ourselves internally?

●      how can we collaborate and coalition-build with one another?

●      what roles do women author societies play in building community and sense of purpose and belonging in higher education?

●      why do some scholars of some women writers choose not to organize as author societies? why may that be a deliberate choice, not just a consequence of racist and/or sexist disciplinary histories?

●      what barriers to inclusion should we dismantle?

●      how might we respond to changing conditions of the profession?

●      how can we best support students through undergraduate and/or graduate teaching and mentoring?

●      how can we best support emerging teacher-scholars as universities change?

●      how can we best support the non-academic communities we wish to serve through, for instance, public humanities projects or racial justice initiatives?

Submissions about the Margaret Fuller Society are, of course, welcome, but proposals need not be limited to Fuller. We deliberately seek engagement between and across author societies to think creatively and imaginatively together about the future of our work. The Fuller Society’s Committee for Racial Justice encourages submissions that address anti-racist approaches to scholarship, pedagogy, and community engagement. Scholars of color and early career scholars are—as always—especially invited to apply.

Please send proposals (250–300 words) or questions to Mollie Barnes at mbarnes2@uscb.edu with “SSAWW 2025” in the subject line by 21 February 2025.