CFP: C19 2024 (Pasadena, CA, March 14-16 2024)

“Will you finish your story?”: Trans Studies and Julia Ward Howe’s “Laurence” 20 Years Later  

Panel Organizers: Eagan Dean (Rutgers New Brunswick) and Kadin Henningsen (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)

Respondent: Dr. Karen Sanchez-Eppler (Amherst College)

This panel marks the 20th anniversary of the print publication of Julia Ward Howe’s famously unended “Laurence” novel as The Hermaphrodite (2004). Since then, trans and intersex studies have provided new insights, theories, and methods for revisiting Howe’s novel. We seek panelists for a proposed session that uses the novel and its anniversary as a springboard. We invite  trans and/or intersex studies approaches to exploring the unfinished nature of Howe’s “Laurence” manuscript and other texts, including papers that engage with the materiality of Howe’s “Laurence” manuscript and its later embodiment in print, topics in scholarly editing, and trans/queer, incomplete, or otherwise unruly texts. 

Please send a 200-word abstract and short bio to the panel organizers at e.dean@rutgers.edu and kjh3@illinois.edu by July 15, 2023. We will notify selected panelists by August 1.