Deadline: January 22, 2025
Contact: Melissa Adams-Campbell, Professor, Northern Illinois University
Email: madamscampbell@niu.edu

The Society of Early Americanists is seeking conference paper proposals for two society-sponsored panels to be held at the 2025 American Literature Association Conference in Boston. The conference will be held from May 21-24, 2025 at the Westin Copley Place Hotel. Please consider submitting a proposal and sharing this CFP with graduate students and other interested parties.

Boston, New England, and the Northeast hold a deep significance in American literary studies, for instance, in Lisa Brooks’s analysis of “the common pot” in Native conceptions of this locale and in numerous studies of Puritan faith and spiritual writing as well as studies of the new political, social, and geographical affiliations formed during the American Revolution. What role do place-based or geographic approaches play in contemporary studies of early American literature? How might attending to place in the Northeast and beyond (re)shape our conceptions of “early America”? And, of course, how do early American authors before 1830 conceptualize the importance of place, the environment, land and water, and the human impact on these places in their writing? Proposals are not limited to the northeast; any considerations of place, land, or environmental approaches are welcome. Please send 250-word paper proposals to madamscampbell@niu.edu by January 22, 2025 for consideration. Proposals from graduate students and independent scholars are welcome.

Posted on December 5, 2024