Conference: Lifting Belly High: Women’s Poetry Since 1900

Lifting Belly High: Women’s Poetry Since 1900 will be held at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, September 11, 12, & 13, 2008. This conference celebrates women poets of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries through a national gathering of critics, scholars and poets, including Blau DuPlessis, Kathleen Fraser, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, Lisa Samuels, Anne Finch, Dawn Lundy Martin, Cristanne Miller, Arielle Greenberg, Alan Golding, Susan Stanford Friedman, Debbie Mix, Adalaide Morris, Lynn Keller, Leslie Wheeler, Elizabeth Frost, and Cynthia Hogue. Exploring the rich and diverse textures of poetry and scholarship, the conference encourages discussion about the shape and direction of women’s poetry and discourse that can carry poetry into academic, social and political life. The conference will include a range of contexts for discussing and hearing poetry:

• Plenary panels featuring invited scholars and poets discussing “new directions in scholarship,” “poetry and the visual,” and “feminism, formalism and innovation.”
• Readings by contemporary poets
• Break-out sessions for submitted papers and panels
• Seminar discussions of pre-submitted papers on various topics
  

We invite panel, paper, and seminar topic proposals on women’s poetry since 1900, including but not limited to the direction of scholarship about women’s poetry; producing, accessing, and editing texts; pedagogical approaches to experimental writing; neglected issues in women’s poetry; spirituality and religion, and the separatist anthology.

• Individual paper submissions should be limited to abstracts of 300 words. Please include the name and contact information.
• Panel proposals should include a rationale as well as paper abstracts of no more than 300 words each.
  
• Seminar proposals should state the panel organizer(s), rationale for the topic, discussion format plans, and ideal number of participants.

Deadline for submissions (extended): May 16, 2008. Send submissions electronically to: womenspoetry@yahoo.com, or by mail to: Women Poets, Department of English, Duquesne University, 600 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15282.

Questions and inquiries may be directed to Dr. Elisabeth Joyce, Dr. Linda Kinnahan, Dr. Elizabeth Savage, or Dr. Ellen McGrath Smith at womenspoetry@yahoo.com.

More information is available on the conference website: www.duq.edu/womenpoets