The Stowe Society has invited other women’s author societies to participate in a second Transatlantic Women conference to be held in Florence, Italy, in the summer of 2012 or 2013.  The first conference, Transatlantic Women:  Nineteenth-Century American Women Writers in Great Britain, Ireland, and Europe, in July 2008, was co-sponsored with the Catharine Maria Sedgwick Society and the Margaret Fuller Society. Located at the Rothermere American Institute at the University of Oxford, with accommodations at St. Catherine’s College, the international conference featured 76 participants from nine countries.

The Catharine Maria Sedgwick Society is the first group to join with us for the second conference on nineteenth-century American women writers abroad.

We’ve chosen Florence, Italy, for several reasons.  The most important one is that so many of our writers traveled to and spent time in Florence.  Sirpa Salenius, an independent scholar who lives and works in Florence, has volunteered to do the groundwork for the conference; she has already begun to look for meeting rooms and hotel space for lodgings and meals.  Since universities in Italy don’t have dormitories, we would have to stay in one or two hotels that are next to each other.

Further details on the conference in Florence will be discussed at the Saturday lunch at the SSAWW conference on 24 October 2009.  All ideas and offers to help with a second international conference are welcome.  Please contact Beth L. Lueck.