Dear Transatlantic Travelers,

I was glad to hear at the SSAWW conference that so many of you are interested in a second Transatlantic Women conference abroad. Although we are in the early planning stages yet, I want to tell you what we’re considering. There are three of us involved in planning the conference: Lucinda Damon-Bach, president of the Sedgwick Society; Sirpa Salenius, an independent scholar in Florence; and myself.

At present the Harriet Beecher Stowe Society and the Catharine Maria Sedgwick Society are co-sponsoring the conference. I’ve invited other author societies to join us, but it looks as if it may be just these two societies. As before, however, all scholars will be welcome to join us, and we hope to embrace a wide range of authors and topics related to transatlanticism.

As many of you know, the location of the second conference will be in Florence, Italy. Sedgwick traveled throughout Italy in 1839-40, including a stay in Florence, and Stowe spent the winter of 1859-60 in Florence. Margaret Fuller, Constance Fenimore Woolson, Caroline Kirkland, Julia Ward Howe, Annie Adams Fields, Edith Wharton, Louisa May Alcott, May Alcott, Harriet Hosmer: so many women of letters and arts visited Italy briefly, or spent months or years there soaking up the culture.

The tentative date for the conference is 2013, either at the end of May or early June. Late May would be cooler and probably less expensive than June, but I know some of you may find it harder to travel in May, when some universities are still in session. This is also when the American Literature Association usually has its conference, which may mean a conflict for some of you. We would welcome your thoughts on which month you would prefer.

Thanks to the efforts of Sirpa Salenius, whom some of you met in Oxford at the first Transatlantic Women conference, we have a number of possible venues for the conference. Several American university programs in Florence have expressed interest in the conference, possibly by offering us meeting rooms. Another possibility would be the lovely and historic Centro Arte e Cultura, which is centrally located, or some other historic venue in downtown Florence. Sirpa Salenius is also looking for a historic building in which to hold either an opening reception or a keynote speech. Most of these places are not air-conditioned, and an earlier conference would be probably a cooler one. Since universities in Italy do not have dormitories, we will have to find accommodations in hotels. After we’ve chosen the conference venue, Sirpa Salenius has offered to locate one or more small hotels nearby and to help us negotiate a reasonable price.

If you have a preference for late May or early June 2013, please email me, particularly about university schedules that might prevent attendance at a May conference. Let me know if you have ideas about venues and accommodations, particularly if you have traveled to Florence or lived there. If you would like your name taken off this list, please email me, and I’ll be glad to do so. I’ll post occasional updates for the conference at stowesociety.org.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Best wishes,
Beth

Beth L. Lueck, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of English
Department of Languages & Literatures
University of Wisconsin-Whitewater
800 W. Main Street
Whitewater WI 53190-1790
Heide 418
262.472.5054
lueckb@uww.edu

President, Harriet Beecher Stowe Society