Spring/Summer 2009 Newsletter
CONTENTS
MESSAGE FROM NEWSLETTER EDITOR
I welcome you to my last newsletter as editor! I have very much enjoyed writing the Newsletter (and kindly thank you for patiently indulging me in my mistakes and editorial mis-representations over the years!). I will be moving to the Online Journal in an editorial capacity, and look forward to communicating with you all from there. I will also be maintaining the listserv, so as always, any questions about that can be directed to me. Thank you for your information and your kind comments over the years!
Best wishes!
Aleksondra Hultquist
MESSAGE FROM EXECUTIVE PRESIDENT
As I write this paragraph, I am sitting at home on the first cool day in Georgia in some time, presiding over the replacement of my front door. I have put on a shawl to preserve myself against the damp, and am musing on the way Nature seems inclined to laugh at such human activities as home renovation. There is nothing like planning to spend a day with a gaping hole in the front of the house to have that day turn out as wet and raw as anything I would expect farther north at this time of year. But perhaps heat would be worse? And there are so many other reasons for enjoying the day, including the fact that, for me at least, the semester is over and summer beckons from around the corner.
I hope that all of you are also contemplating summer plans, and that those plans including working on a paper for the Aphra Behn conference in Lebanon, Tennessee, the first weekend in November. Michael Rex, our intrepid organizer, has not only presided over the call for papers and booked local arrangements, but has also taken on the direction of Behn’s The Luckey Chance. He assures me that we have a goodly number of papers (60, I think) and that the conference will be well-attended. Don’t be left out! Come for the company and the play if you don’t want to give a paper. And bring your friends. I look forward to seeing all of you.
Some members of the Executive Board and the developers of the nascent journal met over lunch in March, at the annual ASECS meeting in Richmond, VA. Most of our discussion centered on the journal. I have asked the various society members involved in that initiative to put together a prospectus in time for the Annual Meeting in November, so that the membership can see exactly what we intend and how the journal is going to function. From what I have seen through these deliberations and the ongoing email conversation among the participants, I can assure you it is going to be innovative and multi-media.
At that meeting, Aleksondra Hultquist informed us that after six years in the position, she feels it is time for her to resign as Newsletter Editor. She has done a splendid job; at her initiative, the newsletter has gone from html to pdf to web form, and it is through her sponsorship that we now have a listserv rather than a mass emailing. She has also been a calm and cheerful email presence in my own work with the society. In the fall she and her daughter will be moving to Australia to join her husband, who has taken a one year position there. But she is going to have a role in the new journal, and email makes us all close. Thank you, Aleksondra—you have made my presidency very easy!
Martha F. Bowden
Executive President
mbowden@kennesaw.edu
Aphra Behn Online
Mission Statement:
The Aphra Behn Online Journal (official title soon to come) is an online publication which serves as a forum for interactive scholarly discussion on all aspects of women in the arts between 1660-1830, especially literature, visual arts, music, performance art, film criticism, and production arts. The journal features peer-reviewed articles encompassing subjects on a global range and is intended for scholars and students. The online format will be comprised of four divisions: Scholarship (3-4 essays); Pedagogy (3-4 essays); New Media Applications/ Women on the Web (1-2 essays); and Reviews (4-5 essays). While the publication is open-access, it is associated with the Aphra Behn Society and its biannual conference. The journal, hosted by the University of South Florida, will make use of the Digital Humanities to ensure that all visual and auditory aspects of the paper can be easily accessed by the readership.
Our current editorial staff is as follows:
Editors:
Judy Hayden, Book Review Editor, (University of Tampa)
Laura Runge, Pedagogy Editor (University of South Florida)
Kirsten Saxton, Scholarly Editor (Mills College)
First Assistant Editor: Jennifer Golightly (University of Denver)
Assistant Editors: Emily Bowels-Smith (Lawrence University)
Aleksondra Hultquist (University of West Georgia)
2009 CONFERENCE
APHRA BEHN SOCIETY CONFERENCE
NOVEMBER 5-7, 2009
NASHVILLE TENNESSEE
“Letting Flowers Fall: Memory and Meaning in Women’s Literature”
Please join us! For specific information please see the website or contact the Conference President:
Dr. Michael Rex
mrex@cumberland.edu
Assistant Professor of English
Cumberland University
1 Cumberland Square
Lebanon, TN 37087
All Panelists must be members of The Aphra Behn Society.
To join: http://www.oldroads.org/behn/members.htm
The Aphra Behn Society Graduate Essay Prize is a biannual award made by the Society for the best graduate student paper presented at the ABS Meeting. In addition to special recognition, the prize carries a cash award of $300.
The paper you submit for the prize should be the one you presented at the conference with expansion and revision (about 4,000-6,000 words). Papers should be correctly formatted according to a documentation style (Chicago or MLA). Submissions must be sent directly to Dr. Aleksondra Hultquist, the committee chair for the 2009 Graduate Student Essay Prize. Submissions must be received by January 10, 2010. Please send an attached Word Document or PDF to ahultqui@westga.edu or aleksondra12@yahoo.com or via snail mail:
Dr. Aleksondra Hultquist
Aphra Behn Society Graduate Essay Prize
Depart of English and Philosophy
University of West Georgia
1601 Maple Street
Carrollton GA, 30118.
The winner of the prize will be notified soon after the committee has made its decision and will be announced through the Aphra Behn Society’s Newsletter and listserv.
APHRA AT ASECS
The Aphra Behn Society sponsored two panels at ASECS 2009 in Richmond, on the theme of “International Aphra.” Our six panelists spoke about Behn’s drama, prose narratives, and poetry. Their papers, exploring different facets of the question of Behn in an international context, not only offered new ways of regarding particular aspects of her work or new approaches to the emergence of the novel, for example, but also reminded listeners of truths in danger of being taken for granted in the study of literature and especially, of women authors. Discussion following both panels was lively and we thank our panelists--Jason Pearl, Jamie Kinsley, Cynthia Richards, Alvin Snider, Tara Ghoshal Wallace, and Judy Hayden--as well as the engaged, thoughtful audiences who heard their work.
ANNOUNCEMENTS
Dr. Robin Runia (one of the incredible organizers of the last ABS conference in New Mexico) has accepted a position at Angelo State University in San Angelo, TX. Congratulations!
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Birgit Schmidt-Rosemann (another of the incredible organizers of the Albuquerque conference), whilst expecting her second baby, was awarded the rarely awarded DISTINCTION on her doctoral exams for her thesis, “Pox’d Whores and Virginal Fannies: Shifting Representations of Women’s Bodies and Their Effect on Female Satire in the Eighteenth Century.” (She’ll go on job market in the fall.)
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Over twenty years ago, I bought at a used book sale in Tulsa, OK The Works of Aphra Behn, published by Heineman and dated MCMXV. It is # 416 of 760 printed sets. After doing graduate work that included study of women writers of 18th century England, I have taken a different career path. I have come to realize that I don’t want this set to languish in my collection when it might provide a scholar with a fascinating opportunity. While I am aware of what the set could fetch in the open rare book market, I am really more interested in letting a Behn scholar purchase it directly from me.
The set is complete, it is still in the cloth publisher’s bindings, the pages are uncut, and there is no damage to the bindings or the pages. This is a complete, rare book set in very good condition. A very similar set currently for sale by a rare book dealer is being sold for $350.00. I would accept $325.00.
Please contact me if you are interested,
Charmaine Wellington charmaine.wellington@gmail.com
CALLS FOR PAPERS
FLORIDA CONSORTIUM FOR WOMEN’S AND GENDER STUDIES
UNIVERSITY OF TAMPA, TAMPA, FLORIDA
OCTOBER 2-4, 2009
The Florida Consortium for Women’s and Gender Studies will host their fourth annual conference on October 2-4, 2009. This interdisciplinary conference will be held at the University of Tampa, Tampa, Florida.
Plenary speaker at the conference will be Sonia Fuentes, first woman attorney in the Office of the General Counsel at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and Co-founder of the National Organization for Women (NOW) and Federally Employed Women (FEW).
The breadth of this conference allows for research in a wide historical area, allowing for papers which: a) revisit and reexamine well-known historical landmarks for women to explore their legacies for the present and the future; b) investigate contemporary interaction of women’s movements with local, regional, and global communities, organizations, and institutions; c) look to the future to explore how underlying ideological concerns today will impact women’s roles tomorrow.
Individual papers, panels and roundtables or workshops are welcome. We encourage a broad range of theoretical and methodological avenues of approach and welcome innovative presentational formats.
Areas in which women mobilize for change incorporate a wide range, including for example:
- corporate culture
- gay/lesbian/queer culture
- women’s participation in the sciences
- civil rights
- literature and cultural/intellectual exchange
- domestic violence/sexual assault
- fine arts and performing arts
- women and mass media
- women and the environment
- women’s health and/or women healers
- feminism and race, ethnicity, class, and age
- gender and work
- gender and education
- women and technology
- consumerism
- fine and performing arts
- first, second, and/or third wave feminist movements
Individual conference papers should be no more than 20 minutes in duration. Once the papers have been accepted, they will be grouped into sessions by the conference organizers.
For more information visit the website: http://www.cas.usf.edu/womens_studies/index.html
Abstracts should be at least 250 to 500 words double-spaced, include the presenter’s contact information and brief vita, and must be received by June 1, 2009. Abstracts may be sent electronically or by regular mail to:
Judy A. Hayden,
Chair of English and Writing,
University of Tampa,
401 West Kennedy Boulevard,
Tampa, Florida 33606-1490
813-257-3535
JHAYDEN@UT.EDU
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GEMCS (GROUPS FOR EARLY MODERN CULTURAL STUDIES) CONFERENCE
“TRACING FOOTPRINTS”
DALLAS, TEXAS
OCTOBER 22-25, 2009
Drawing from the language of ecology, environmental studies, and urban planning, the theme of this year’s GEMCS conference focuses on the different valences and metaphorical possibilities of the footprint. We are especially concerned with exploring the many meanings of the footprint and expanding it as a paradigm for early modern representation. The ecological footprint is a measure of human demand on ecosystems; the representational footprint may be a measure of a variety of demands” on and by a text-social, historical, institutional, and textual. The “carbon footprint” questions the global space that a city, an automobile industry, or a single individual occupies; it thus complicates differences and demarcations between built and wild spaces, technology and climate, people and nature. How does tracing a text’s footprint challenge existing definitions and boundaries of the space it occupies? How do we trace the genealogies of texts? What sorts of competing histories are embedded in objects of representation?
This year’s conference theme, “Tracing Footprints,” is intended to be suggestive rather than prescriptive, and as always, GEMCS welcomes panels and proposals on all aspects of culture between 1452 and 1848.
GEMCS was formed in 1993 to promote the study of literature, history, art history, and material culture from the Renaissance to the mid-nineteenth century across disciplinary, geographic, and cultural boundaries.
Send one-page proposals for individual papers or fully constituted panels to rsudan@smu.edu by June 20, 2009. In the spirit of encouraging discussion, papers are limited to ten minutes.
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THE STRADDLER
The first issue of The Straddler, a quarterly online magazine, has been launched at www.thestraddler.com. Innovative in its approach, The Straddler, through its essays, art, fiction, and interviews, aims to examine and investigate cultural content in a thoughtful and thought-provoking manner. Able to handle the broad and the particular, the general and the specific, The
Straddler shies away from neither academically nor popularly informed criticism, but offers something more than either, at present, provides. Presenting well-reasoned essays that end up asking more profound questions than they answer, The Straddler has found its niche. Free of visual cacophony and muddled editorial content, and defying all of the peripheral expectations traditionally associated with magazine-reading, The Straddler is the anti-magazine of our day.
The Spring Summer2008 issue includes an essay in which the relationship between an Emily Dickinson poem, the New Testament's Book of Matthew, the Gettysburg Address, and George Bush's 2007 Memorial Day speech is examined; a consideration of the American gangster
film in light of the American economic system (with the latter described as a "con," and the gangster's tactics being the "con of the con"); a thought-provoking meditation on the works of writers Anne Carson and recent Nobelist Doris Lessing; and original artwork, poetry, and fiction. The Straddler is guided by co-editors Elizabeth Murphy, a Boston-based poet and essayist, and Dan Monaco, a New York-based novelist, playwright, and essayist.
"Our hope," Elizabeth Murphy writes, "is to provide a venue for work that understands the importance of its cultural context." Dan Monaco adds that, "questions of some interest to human beings at a particularly fraught moment in history are often shoved aside in favor of less interesting projects. It is perhaps too much to ask of any one discipline in our age what used to be asked of philosophy (what is the right way to live, what is the best way to organize a society, what sorts of actions are moral, what is to be said for human happiness, and so on), but it is equally true that it is not too much to ask criticism to fill some of the void left by philosophy's shrinking profile in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries."
In an age with fear to spare, with repetition and cultural diminishment the norm, The Straddler
represents a bucking of these trends. "Don't fear," The Straddler exhorts its readers, "what you do understand."
Writers interested in submitting to The Straddler should read the submissions guidelines posted on its "About" page at: http://www.thestraddler.com/about.php
MEMBERSHIP INFORMATION
If you would like to become a member, please provide your name, institutional affiliation, mailing address, email address, and phone number, or, simply print and fill out the dues form on our website.
Send your information, along with your check made out to The Aphra Behn Society to our Executive President:
Martha F. Bowden
Associate Professor
Department of English
Kennesaw State University
1000 Chastain Road, Building 27
Kennesaw. GA 30144
The Aphra Behn Society is heavily dependent on membership dues for our conferences. Dues also aid in reducing fees for graduate students and in providing the Graduate Student Essay Prize awarded during our conferences. We appreciate your support and we encourage you to extend the invitation to join to scholars working on women in the arts in the long eighteenth century.
