The Stowe Society’s bicentennial conference at Bowdoin College, 23-25 June 2011, will feature a keynote address by Susan Belasco entitled “Stowe in Her Time and Ours” on Friday night.  The keynote will follow a banquet featuring a lobster bake.

Registration will be available in early February through the Stowe Society website; there will be a link on the site to register for housing and meals, which will be provided at Bowdoin College.

Other featured events include an opening night reception at the Hawthorne-Longfellow Library, and a trip to the Maine Women Writers Collection on Saturday.  There will be a book exhibit at the college in connection with the conference.  Saturday night Bowdoin’s Theater and Dance Department will stage an adaptation of Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

At the SSAWW conference in Philadelphia the Stowe Society, Margaret Fuller Society, and the Catharine Maria Sedgwick Society will sponsor a box lunch on Saturday, 24 October, from 12:15 to 1:30 p.m. in the Bromley/Claypool Room.  The informal agenda will include discussion of collaborative activities among the three societies (and others), past and future.  Stowe’s upcoming bicentennial in 2011, a national conference at Bowdoin College, and a second transatlantic conference will also be on the agenda.

The boxed lunch costs $10.  Those interested should register for the lunch on the registration site for the SSAWW conference. Lunches are free for graduate students, who can register on the same site and simply check the box for graduate students.  The three author societies are subsidizing the cost of the lunches.

Conference Planning for the Author Society: A Roundtable Discussion
(Friday, 23 Oct., 4:00-5:15 p.m.)

1. Beth L. Lueck, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, chair, “Planning an International Conference on a Shoestring Budget”

2. Brigitte Bailey, University of New Hampshire, “Framing Conference Questions,
Developing Programs, and Collaborating with Other Organizations”

3. Lucinda Damon-Bach, Salem State College, “From the Ground, Up: Five Conferences in Ten Years for Sedgwick and Her Contemporaries”

This roundtable will offer officers of other author societies, as well as any conference participant, information about how to plan a small to mid-sized conference. The three participants listed above all have experience in conference organization, from small conferences (several dozen participants) to mid-sized (75 to 80), from regional to international conferences. During the planning of the international conference Transatlantic Women: 19th-C. American Women Writers in Great Britain, Ireland, and Europe, the organizers remarked numerous times that the planning would have been easier if we had had the benefit of other author societies’ experience. While everyone we asked for advice gladly gave it, we still sometimes felt as if we were “reinventing the wheel.” For this roundtable, Brigitte Bailey, President of the Margaret Fuller Society, brings her experience working on conferences with the Fuller Society and writing the CFP and organizing the program for Transatlantic Women; she will also discuss collaborating with other organizations. Lucinda Damon-Bach, President of the Catharine Maria Sedgwick Society, offers her experience planning smaller conferences that offer opportunities to present on a range of authors and topics. Beth Lueck directed Transatlantic Women and will offer tips on planning an international conference and dealing with contracts, both domestic and international.