The first meeting of the DC Region American Women Writers Study Group will be held on Friday, October 31st, in Room G07 of the Library of Congress Jefferson Building. We will explore the research challenges scholars face when recovering the work of obscure women writers, and then discuss the implications of obscurity in women’s 19th-century social reform literature.

There will be a morning and afternoon session. In the morning, Library of Congress (LOC) reference specialists from several reading rooms across the Library will present a panel discussion about researching the life and work of lesser-known women writers. There will also be an opportunity to visit the Manuscript Division, where we will view several manuscripts from the American literature collection. There are restrictions on how many people can view the documents, so please RSVP if you would like to attend the morning session. Send your RSVP to Jessie Matthews at jmatthe2@gmu.edu by Monday, October 27th.

The afternoon session will be a seminar-style discussion of celebrity and obscurity centered on brief texts written by canonical and non-canonical authors of nineteenth-century social reform movements. First, we will compare the work of Harriet Beecher Stowe to her lesser-known abolitionist contemporary, Emily Clemens Pearson. Second, we will explore how the frequently anthologized Elaine Goodale Eastman, the late 19th-century American Indian acculturation activist, compares to her colleague, Frances Campbell Sparhawk, whose Indian reform novels and essays are largely unknown today.

The Stowe and Pearson texts are available for download here (on our old web site) or here (on this site). Download the Eastman text here or here, the Sparhawk text here or here.

You are welcome to attend either or both sessions, and the lunch in between, which will include a brief business meeting to plan a winter/spring 2009 meeting. Please be thinking about ideas and whether you could volunteer to host and/or organize the next program. A more detailed schedule of the day’s activities is available below.

Reminder--Please send your RSVP to Jessie Matthews at jmatthe2@gmu.edu by Monday, October 27th.

We're looking forward to seeing you on the 31st! 

Cathy Saunders

Jessie Matthews

Lisa Koch

SCHEDULE FOR OCTOBER 31

The fall meeting of the DC Region American Women Writers Study Group will take place at the Library of Congress on October 31, 2008. The focus of our meeting is twofold: to obtain strategies for researching the work of more obscure women writers, and to contemplate the reasons for obscurity and celebrity in the work of nineteenth-century women writers active in social reform movements.

8:30 AM to 8:45 AM - Meet at the Carriage Entrance of the Jefferson Building (the First Street entrance) and go through security. Abby Yochelson, Reference Specialist from the Humanities and Social Sciences Division of the Library of Congress, will meet us there.

9:00 AM to 11:15 AM - Panel discussion on archival research, held in Room G07 of the Jefferson Building. The panel will consist of reference specialists from the Humanities and Social Sciences Division, including a representative from the Local History and Genealogy Reading Room, the Newspaper and Current Periodical Reading Room, and the Manuscript Division.

11:15 AM to 12:15 PM – Brief tour of the Manuscript Division, where Dr. Alice Birney, the American literature specialist, will have a display of literary documents.

12:30 PM to 1:30 PM - Lunch in the cafeteria of the Madison Building

1:30 PM to 3:00 PM – Reconvene in Room G07 in the Jefferson Building for our presentations on celebrity/obscurity vis-à-vis Harriet Beecher Stowe and Emily Clemens Pearson, and Elaine Goodale Eastman and Frances Campbell Sparhawk. We will discuss nineteenth-century women writers as social activists: who gets read today and why?