Louisa May Alcott Society

  The Louisa May Alcott Society announces two calls for papers for the American Literature Association Conference in Boston, MA, May 26-29, 2027. 1. Wild(ing) Alcott Take a walk on the wild side with the Louisa May Alcott Society at ALA 2027. We invite proposals for a panel addressing strange, rebellious, unruly, radical, or otherwise feral scenes in Alcott’s writing. “Wildness” might be personal, familial, communal, political, aesthetic, or an attribute of the natural world. Wild plots, wild settings, wild children, wild adults: who or what is coded as “wild” in Alcott’s writing, and how are dangerous, exciting, or exotic others (human or not) valorized, domesticated, tolerated, or expelled? How did Alcott depict the wilderness? Was Alcott herself a wild child growing up? Who among her contemporaries perceived Alcott’s wildness? Where in her fiction, essays, letters, and journals does Alcott express longing to sow her own wild oats (transcendental or otherwise)? Did or does Alco...

Please mark your calendars for our annual virtual event, Celebrating Alcott. This year’s celebration will be on Nov. 29 at 12 pm PST, 1 pm MST, 2 pm CST, 3 pm EST. The event is free and open to the public and will feature playwright Lauren Gunderson . Join us on Zoom at https://lcsc.zoom.us/j/7967888338 . We look forward to seeing you.

The Louisa May Alcott Society is delighted to announce the recipients of its 2026 awards for scholarly excellence in Alcott studies. The following awards were announced at our business meeting at the American Literature Association Conference in Chicago last week. Beverly Lyon Clark Article Prize The Beverly Lyon Clark Article Prize Committee is pleased to announce that the 2026 prize goes to Ariel Little for “‘Health Should Come First’: Alcott’s Model of Hygienic Female Development in Eight Cousins.” Little’s essay applies the nineteenth-century cultural concept of “hygiene” to offer an insightful reading of Rose’s character development, connecting her embrace of hygienic principles to her growing agency as a woman. Drawing on recent scholarship alongside original texts by nineteenth-century women doctors and health care professionals, Little persuasively demonstrates that for Alcott, good health was not simply an end in itself but a means by which women could achieve greater indepen...