SSAWW 2025

7 November 2025: Back at my favorite conference! Already had several quiet "fangirl" moments. I attended a session about how author societies can collaborate and speak to our current moment(s). What a perfect encapsulation of the kind of meaningful work these scholars do. 

You don't know until you are there...

14 October 2025: Spent a lot of today revisiting and chopping down my SSAWW paper. I finished a decent draft over the summer, but then set it aside until today. (I had planned for 20 minutes, but I am on a panel of four, so I needed to chop, chop, chop.)

Last weekend, I sent the session chair the information he requested, including an abstract. 

Reading the paper today, I realized that abstract doesn't really fit the paper. It's too broad, too generic. It doesn't say what the paper is actually about. But of course that's because I wrote it before I wrote the essay. 

So, I just emailed him with a new version.

This is a good lesson for my students: you shouldn't waste too much time on introductions or an exact thesis early on. You don't know what you are going to argue until you make the argument. Then you revise, revise, revise.

Feeling pretty good about it, but it is a weird little essay. 

Almost there...

4 June 2025: I am in a phase of drafting my SSAWW paper where the nuanced version central idea is starting to come together. (I have a thesis, but usually there’s a more specific one lurking, waiting to emerge.) A piece just clicked into place a couple of hours ago—about a lack of authorial intention—that feels promising. There’s just one more piece, I think, and I am on the verge. 

It’s a cool place to be. The frustrating is slowly receding and the next step—a complete first draft—is coming up, Lord willing.

"all kinds of magic in the world..."

16 May 2025: “There are all kinds of magic in the world…And the sort of magic that ensures that when someone has decided that they would like a cat, a cat finds their way into their life” (59).

Working on some more notes for my SSAWW paper and came across this quotation that delighted me the first time I read Not Quite a Ghost. (I alluded to the book's cat in this post earlier this week.)

Makes me think of these two, who bring me so much happiness.

Work Cited

Ursu, Anne. Not Quite a Ghost. HarperCollins Publishers, 2024.

"Return need not be regression"

13 May 2025: “Power, too, can be adapted—that is, destabilized, disrupted—and again both memory and mutation, theme and variation are at work. Return need not be regression” (Hutcheon 175).

Thinking a lot about Hutcheon's work on adaptation--particularly this idea--as I conceptuatlize my SSAWW paper, about a YA book inspired by Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper." 

Work Cited

Hutcheon, Linda. A Theory of Adaptation. 2nd ed., Routledge, 2013. 

"there should be a cat in every book..."

6 May 2025: Started working in earnest on my SSAWW 2025 paper today, which included revisiting this charming interview with Anne Ursu, whose YA novel, Not Quite a Ghost,  I am writing about. Hard to disagree with her on why she added a cat to the book: "I did have to have her discover a cat because, I mean, first of all, there should be a cat in every book, but also, she needed something to interact with." 

SSAWW 2025!

22 April 2025: (Once again trying to start the day with a positive post!) I realized this morning that I hadn't stopped to really feel good about an email I got yesterday: my abstract for SSAWW 2025 was accepted. I am delighted to get to work on a weird little paper about a YA book inspired by "The Yellow Wallpaper." It should be a fun summer project. And SSAWW is in Philadelphia, one of my favorite conference cities (with a nearby Vogel bonus). 

New (little) project...

10 January 2025: With the exception of opening convocation, today was a kind of quiet day, which worked out just fine. Did some more preparation for Monday (and beyond), filed/sorted/tossed a lot of papers from last semester, and ran some errands. 

I also got (a bit more) started on a new research project: a proposal for SSAWW in Philadelphia in November. It feels good to jump into a new (small) project. The rhythms of the process--having an idea, searching for sources, tracking them down, getting a sense of the conversation, finding ways into it--are pleasantly familiar and quietly exciting. Nerdy as heck, but I am who I am. 

"we are the only wonderful things, because we can wonder"

18 May 2022: "I can’t believe that all that majesty and all that beauty, those fated and unfailing appearances and exits, are something more than mathematics and horrible temperatures. If they are not, then we are the only wonderful things, because we can wonder." --Willa Cather, talking about the stars, in a letter to her partner, Edith Lewis.

I really enjoyed this piece by Melissa Homestead (fellow SSAWW member!) which included the letter quoted above. It's well worth a read. 

SSAWW

4 November 2021: Here are your clues: replying to  work emails that piled up during sessions, hotel artwork in the background, and a lanyard that I only just realized I forgot to remove. That's right: in-person conferences are back!

There's that feeling again...

3 November 2021: That feeling my post title refers to? That particular brand of low-level anxiety before a trip, in this case, a trip for a conference. Haven't felt this in two years! (I have done conferences since then, but they've been virtual.) Remarkable how similar the feelings are, including a whole lot of "I wish this were already over even though I know it will be fun" and "Can't wait to pull back into the driveway." 

Some of these vibes...

29 July 2021: 

Channeled a bit of these BabyCat vibes today (after mowing the lawn). Didn't snooze, but took a long bath and then worked from home most of the day. Headed to campus around 3:00 and worked there until Hannah got off work. Then we went to the new ice-cream place in town (very good!) and hung out for a couple hours. 

And that SSAWW paper? I did another round of revision and editing and practiced it. It's good enough to set aside for now. I can't believe it's done before the end of July. My original plan was to write it in August. So I am way ahead and ready to hit the next thing on my crazy summer work list. Whew.

Good summer vibes...

A complete draft...

28 July 2021: A mixed bag of a day emotion/thought-wise, but I have a complete draft of my SSAWW paper about In the Dream House and that feels pretty good. Will do a round or two of revising tomorrow and maybe time it. Then I think I might set it aside for a while. The presentation isn't until November, which seems years away.

SSAWW: Day 4, heading home...

[Catch-up post...]

11 November 2018: After my last presentation (which also went pretty well, I think!), Amy and I headed back to the airport and then back home. Snow in Denver complicated things just a bit, but I pulled into the driveway in Shepherdstown just before 11:00 p.m. Whew!

One last (snowy!) Denver photo.

SSAWW: Day 3

[Catch-up post...]

10 November 2018: The fact that I don't have any photos for today's post perhaps indicates that it was (mostly) all business--not that that's ever a bad thing at SSAWW. Vogel's panel (in the morning) was great, as were all the sessions I attended. Amy and I had our presentation in the afternoon and it went really well, too.

We ended the day with dinner at a little Vietnamese restaurant (very good!) and a drink in hotel bar. Not bad!

SSAWW: Day 2

[Catch-up post...]

9 November 2018: Day 2 of SSAWW 2018 started off with the Mentoring Breakfast, where I chaired a table on the Academic Job Search and attended a session. Then I headed out for some Denver adventures with three of my favorite people on the planet...

At the state capital with Tim and Amy.

At dinner with Vogel. 

SSAWW: Day 1

[Catch-up post...]

8 November 2018: Hands down, SSAWW is my favorite conference. It was even nicer this time, not having an administrative job! Day one of SSAWW 2018 ended wonderfully, with a screening of Wild Nights with Emily with a post-film discussion featuring the director.

A Tale for the Time Being

Currently working on a conference paper about this amazing book. Here's a passage that stands out to me today:

"...Dad would walk me to school and we'd talk about stuff. I don't remember what, and it didn't matter. The important thing was that we were being polite and not saying all the things that were making us unhappy, which was the only way we knew how to love each other" (47).

Crushingly simple and true.

Getting to know you...

The "you" in this post's title refers to my newest adventure in research: a long anticipated project on Fanny Fern that I am only just starting. (It's not that big a project--for now, just a paper for SAMLA in November.) Anyway, as I look towards wrapping up one big project (that MELUS article I mentioned here) and get ready to start writing another conference paper (this one on Constance Fenimore Woolson, for the SSAWW conference in October--and the research/note-taking is done on this one), it seems like the right time to start the Fern project. I will confess, though, to having a lot of it already written in my head.

Major nerd alert, but it's so true: this first phase of research--hitting the MLA bibliography, ordering ILL materials, printing off articles, picking up books, really diving into the conversation--is just always so exciting to me.

Fall wrap-up

Now that I am catching my breath, here are some photo highlights (?) from this past semester...

First, there were the conferences...


Vogel and I at SSAWW in Philadelphia in October. This is the one decent photo I have from that conference.


Aaron and David at SAMLA in Atlanta in November. A couple of hotties, right?


Gretchen was at SAMLA, too, and we totally geeked out over her presence at the book displays. The above photo is a blurb she has on the back of this book.


And of course we had to get a photo of her just happening to notice her own book on sale.

Of course, it wasn't all about glamourous conferences and travel this semester. There was also, as I've complained about a lot on this blog, tons of freakin' work to do!


Not everyone was happy about all that work. Here are Bing and Wes doing their best to talk me into taking a break one night. This was in the middle of advising, as evidenced by the spring course schedule and catalog in the picture.


Bing's tactics got increasingly desparate that night. "If she won't stop, I'll just throw myself on the papers and look cute."

Again, it was a long semester!

But there were some fun moments, like the one below, from Allison's Halloween party.


Why yes, that is Little Red Riding Hood, Marie Antoinette, and a poor imitation of the Octomom.