The next meeting of the Texas Regional SSAWW Study Group will be on Saturday October 7, 2023 at the University of Texas Austin, hosted by Gretchen Murphy. The common reading will be Annie Nathan Meyer’s Helen Brent, M.D. (1892), edited by Stephanie Peebles Tavera (Hastings College Press, 2020). Dr. Peebles Tavera will be a special guest participant. 

Helen Brent, M.D. “narrates one woman’s struggle for public acceptance as a doctor and a lady among the New York City elite. Unlike earlier works of medical fiction, Helen Brent M.D. does not offer just a marriage-or-career narrative but also a treatise on sex education. Dr. Brent is a skilled surgeon, a New Woman, who also deals with the negative effects of venereal diseases and other social ills of the urban elite on women’s health.” 

Find the book on Amazon or from your local independent bookseller. Be sure to check out Hastings College Press and learn more about their amazing Forgotten Texts series. 

Please RSVP to Gretchen Murphy gretchen@austin.utexas.edu by September 15, and indicate whether you plan to attend the dinner. 

More details regarding the schedule, location, lodging, etc. will be available at our website: http://txssaww.wordpress.com/ 

About the Study Group: We are an informal gathering of professors, graduate students, and independent scholars who share an interest in American women’s writing. We share a lunch (provided by the host campus), spend the afternoon discussing the common reading, and have dinner at a local restaurant (paid individually). We welcome new participants to join the conversation, which is always rich and stimulating, and often touches on larger professional concerns (teaching, publishing, mentoring, etc.).