Conferences

Conference Sessions Sponsored by the Louisa May Alcott Society

May 2024: American Literature Association
Chicago, IL

Democracy and Gender in Alcott and Whitman
Chair: Stephanie M. Blalock, University of Iowa

1.     “Androgynous Patriotism: Reconstituting Democracy through Trans Caregiver Narratives,” Eagan S. Dean, Rutgers University - New Brunswick
2.     “Alcott and Whitman: Gender, Democracy, and … Circus,” David Carlyon, Independent Scholar
3.     “From Orchard House to Central Park: Louisa May Alcott and Walt Whitman on Nature, Democracy, and Gender,” Marco Sioli, University of Milan

Respondent: Gregory Eiselein, Kansas State University

“I Had a Stage-Struck Fit”: Alcott, the Stage, and Performance
Chair: Debra Ryals, Pensacola State College

1.     “Her Truth is Marching on: Resistance and Rebellion in Kate Hamill’s Adaptation of Little Women,” Sarah Wadsworth, Marquette University
2.     “Performing History: Reality and Staginess in Alcott’s Hospital Sketches,” Amanda Adams, Muskingum University
3.     “The Actor’s Voice in Alcott’s ‘Behind a Mask,’” Charlotte Lindemann, Stanford University

Teaching Alcott’s Writings / Teaching in Alcott’s Writings
Chair: Joe Conway, University of Alabama in Hunstville

1.     “‘You talk much about justice. Let us have a little’: Gender, Labor, and Nature in ‘Transcendental Wild Oats,’” Lauren Rizzuto, The Willow School
2.     “Tomboys in the Classroom: Inclusive Pedagogy and the Tomboy Narrative,” Kristen Proehl, SUNY-Brockport
3.     “An Unstable Home: Education and Public Domesticity in Little Men and Jo’s Boys,” Anna De Biasio, University of Bergamo,
4.     “Bronson Alcott’s Pedagogy and Its Representation in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Men,” Roberta Pardi-Oláh, University of Szeged 

July 2023: Annual Gathering of the Thoreau Society
Concord, MA

Louisa May Alcott’s Search for Well-Being in Life and Narrative 
Chair: Phyllis Cole, Penn State
  • “It’s All Vegetables!": Ethical and Sustainable Eating with Louisa May Alcott, Jamie Lynne Burgess
  • “A Better Plan Of Child-Rearing”: An Exploration of Health and Wellness in Louisa May Alcott’s Eight Cousins, Jill Fuller
  • “Women in Search of the Sublime: Louisa May Alcott and May Alcott Nieriker,” Lauren Hehmeyer
  • "Cozy Corners and Pebbly Beaches: The Role of Nature Connectedness in Resolving Emotional Distress and Physical Health Issues," Heidi A. Lawrence
May 2023: American Literature Association
Boston, MA

Working for 150 Years: An Anniversary Panel on Louisa May Alcott’s Work
Chair: Marlowe Daly-Galeano, Lewis-Clark State College 
  • “Off the ‘Treadmill’: What Abigail Alcott’s Ethics Can Teach Us About Life After Capitalism,” Jamie Lynne Burgess, Concord Public Schools
  • “Thought Work (1873) and Depression,” Max Laitman Chapnick, Boston University
  • “Queerly Beloved Community: Queer Love, Intersectional Feminism, and Community Sisterhood in Louisa May Alcott’s Work; or, Reading Alcott’s Work as an Answer to Moods,” Emily Hamilton-Honey, SUNY Canton
  • “Coming Out of the Slough of Despond”: Depression and Recovery in Work,” Karyn Valerius, Hofstra University
  • “The Zaniness of Work,” Joe Conway, University of Alabama in Hunstville
Alcott in the Archives: Utilizing Collections
Moderators: Daniel Shealy, University of North Carolina—Charlotte, and Wesley Mott, Worcester Polytechnic Institute
  • Christine Jacobson, Houghton Library, Harvard University
  • Anke Voss, Director of Special Collections, Concord Free Public Library
  • Jim Cocola, Worcester Polytechnic Institute
  • Anne Phillips, Kansas State University
July 2022: Annual Gathering of the Thoreau Society
Concord, MA

Where in the World is Louisa May Alcott?
Chair: Monika Elbert, Montclair State University
  • “Old Story, New Ending: Crossing Transcendentalism with Ecofeminism to Conjure Cuba in ‘Pauline’s Passion and Punishment,’” Jamie Lynne Burgess, Concord Public Schools
  • “Defining the Tartar: Reconsidering Alcott and Russia,” Daniela Daniele, University of Udine
  • “A Lifelong Dream: Little Women Traveling the World,” Raffaella Cavalieri, University of Siena
  • “Queering the Feminist Icon: Louisa May Alcott and Iconography,” Azelina Flint, Lancaster University
May 2022: American Literature Association
Chicago, IL

The Literary Nonfiction of Louisa May Alcott and Mark Twain
Chair: Roberta Trites, Illinois State University 
  • “‘Making Dirt Pies, and Chip Forts’: Nurse Periwinkle at the Capitol Mall,” Jaclyn Carver, University of Iowa
  • “Literary Nonfiction and Celebrity in the Civil War Era,” Gregory Eiselein, Kansas State University
  • “Alcott & Twain Circus Stories: Nonfiction <-> Fiction,” David Carlyon, Independent Scholar
Kiddie Lit, Sassy Sissies, Tattling Tomboys, and More: Honoring Beverly Lyon Clark 
Chair: Gregory Eiselein, Kansas State University
  • “‘Poor Lads’ and ‘Brave Little Girls’: Reading the Peripheral Child in Alcott’s Works for Children,” Krissie West, Centre for International Research in Childhood: Literature, Culture, Media
  • “New Alcott Pieces Found!” Max Laitman Chapnick, Boston University
  • “Beverly Lyon Clark’s Legacy and the Transforming Call of the Archive,” Marlowe Daly-Galeano, Lewis-Clark State College
November 2021: Society for the Study of American Women Writers
Baltimore, MD

Gothic Ecologies: Alcott, Her Contexts, and Contemporaries
Chair: Sandra Harbert Petrulionis, Pennsylvania State University, Altoona
  • "'Never Mind the Boys': Gothic Persuasions of Jane Goodwin Austin and Louisa May Alcott," Kari Miller, Perimeter College at Georgia State University
  • "Wealth, Handicaps, and Jewels: Alcott's Gothic Tales of Dis-Possession," Monika Elbert, Montclair State University
  • "Alcott in the Cadre of Scribbling Women: 'Realizing' the Female Gothic for Nineteenth Century American Periodicals," Wendy Fall, Marquette University
July 2021: American Literature Association
Boston, MA

Alcott and Adaptation
Chair: Mark Gallagher, University of California, Los Angeles
  • “‘Honest Sentiment’: Little Women on Screen and the Problem of the Sentimental,” Amanda Adams, Muskingum University
  • “Redeeming Amy, Finding Abigail May: Little Women (2019) and the Youngest Sister,” Aryssa Damron, DC Public Library
  • “‘Rowdy and Nothing More’: Writing as Trouble in Greta Gerwig’s Little Women and Louisa May Alcott’s Semi-Autobiographical Sketches,” Jaclyn Carver, University of Iowa
  •  “From Delight to Drama: Adapting Louisa May Alcott’s ‘An Old Fashioned Thanksgiving,’” Heidi A. Lawrence, University of Glasgow
Teaching Alcott: Alcott in Proximity to Other American Realists, Regionalists, Romantics
Moderator: Gregory Eiselein, Kansas State University
  • “Women in the Nineteenth Century: Revising Moods and Revisiting Margaret Fuller,” John J. Kucich, Bridgewater State University
  • “Teaching Alcott and Stowe: The Literary Activism of Regional Writing,” Elif Armbruster, Suffolk University
  • “The Possibilities of War and Death: Liminal Space in Alcott and Dickinson,” Gaynor Blandford, Berklee College of Music
  •  “Alcott’s Proximate Circus: Class, Gender, and Race Under the Lilacs,” David Carlyon, Independent Scholar
  • “Sentimental Realism: Little Women, The Red Badge of Courage, and Postbellum Contexts,” Kristen Proehl, SUNY-The College at Brockport
May 2020: American Literature Association - Cancelled due to COVID-19
San Diego, CA

Teaching Alcott: Alcott in Proximity to Other American Realists, Regionalists, Romantics
Roundtable organized by the Louisa May Alcott Society
Moderator: Gregory Eiselein, Kansas State University
  • John J. Kucich (Bridgewater State University): "Women in the Nineteenth Century: Revising Moods and Revisiting Margaret Fuller"
  • Elif Armbruster (Suffolk University): "Teaching Alcott and Stowe: The Literary Activism of Regional Writing"
  • Jennifer L. Putzi (College of William & Mary): "Intersectional Identities in Alcott and Her Contemporaries"
  • Christine Doyle (Central Connecticut State University): "Alcott, James, and Psychological Realism"
  • Kristen Proehl (SUNY-The College at Brockport): "Sentimental Realism: Little Women, The Red Badge of Courage, and Postbellum Contexts"
Alcott and Adaptation
Organized by the Louisa May Alcott Society
Chair: Mark Gallagher, University of California, Los Angeles
  • Amanda Adams (Muskingum University): “‘Honest Sentiment’: Little Women on Screen and the Problem of the Sentimental”
  • Anne Phillips (Kansas State University): “‘So easily and quickly the bratty sister’: Adapting Amy March”
  • Jaimie McGovern (Boston College): “‘I Care More to Be Loved’: Making Queer Spaces in Greta Gerwig’s Little Women”
 May 2019: American Literature Association
Boston, MA

Adventures in Alcott Scholarship at the Concord Free Public Library
Organized by the Louisa May Alcott Society
Chair: Joel Myerson, Distinguished Professor Emeritus, University of South Carolina
  • Daniel Shealy (UNC-Charlotte): “Louisa May Alcott’s Forgotten Flower Fable”
  • Krissie West (Independent Scholar): “Archives and Absence: Reading the Alcotts in the Concord Free Public Library”
  • Leslie Perrin Wilson (Curator: William Munroe Special Collections, Concord Free Public Library): “Alcott Collection-Building and Scholarship at the CFPL: Whereto from Here?”
Notorious Women, Sensational Texts: The Lives, Writings, and Reforms of Louisa May Alcott and Lydia Maria Child
Organized by the Lydia Maria Child and Louisa May Alcott Societies
Co-Chairs: Sandra Burr, Northern Michigan University; and Sandra Harbert Petrulionis, Penn State Altoona
  • Elizabeth Dean (Rutgers University): “Queer(ed) Kinship and the Sketch: A Genealogy of Political Care in Child and Alcott”
  • Jane Sciacca (Wayland Historical Society and Minutemen National Historic Park): The Wayside, “Writers, Reformers, and Neighbors: The Ties that Bind Lydia Maria Child and Louisa May Alcott” 
  • Monika Elbert (Montclair State University): “The Spectacle of the City and the Drama of Charity in Child’s and Alcott’s Writings”
November 2018: Society for the Study of American Women Authors
Denver, CO

"Reforms of All Kinds": Louisa May Alcott and the Public Humanities Roundtable
Co-Chairs: Sandra Harbert Petrulionis and Daniel Shealy
  • Marlowe Daly-Galeano, “Artistic Attempts" and “Literary Lessons”: A Class Project in Community Engagement and Service Learning
  • Randi Lynn Tanglen, “Hope and Keep Busy”: The Role of the Public Intellectual in Daunting Political Times
  • Anne K. Phillips, “Conversations: University and Community Celebrations of #LittleWomen150”
  • Melissa McFarland Pennell, “From Discovery/Recovery to Public Humanities: Bringing the Work of American Women Writers into Community Consciousness”
  • Mark Gallagher, “An Exhibit Celebrating the 150th Anniversary of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women”
  • Ariel Silver, "From Old-Fashioned Girl to Pioneer Women"
May 2018: American Literature Association
San Francisco, CA

Session 1: Roundtable Discussion on “The Newness of Little Women”
Moderators: Gregory Eiselein and Anne K. Phillips, Kansas State University
  • Sarah Wadsworth (Marquette University): “‘New Friendship Flourished Like Grass in Spring’: The Newness of Friendship in Little Women” 
  • Daniel Shealy: "Wedding Marches": Alcott, Marriage and the Newness of Little Women
  • Krissie West (University of Reading, UK): "Little Women Revisited: Alcott and New Media”
  • Marlowe Daly-Galeano (Lewis-Clark State College): “The Newness of Little Women and the Ephemeral Horror Mash-Up”
  • Elise Hooper (Independent Scholar): “Girl Power: A Look at Recent Little Women Adaptations” 
Session 2: Alcott in the Classroom
Chair: Christine Doyle, Central Connecticut State University
  • Gregory Eiselein (Kansas State University): “Louisa May Alcott, Major Author”
  • Anne K. Phillips (Kansas State University): “‘Thirteen Ways of Looking’: Alcott’s Eight Cousins in the Collegiate Classroom”
May 2017: American Literature Association
Boston, MA

Session 1: Louisa May Alcott in Concord
  • Mark Gallagher (University of California, Los Angeles):“Louisa May Alcott and Transcendentalism’s Affective Legacy” 
  • Anne K. Phillips (Kansas State University): “‘To the Schoolmates of Ellsworth Devens . . . This Village Story is Affectionately Inscribed’” 
  • Tracey A. Cummings (Lock Haven University): “Louisa May Alcott’s Re-‘Work’ing of Thoreau’s Walden” 
Session 2: Rebecca Harding Davis and Louisa May Alcott
  • Jane E. Rose (Purdue University Northwest-Westville Campus): “Reclaiming the Spiritual Self through Maternal Benevolent Feminism in Rebecca Harding Davis’s Margret Howth and Louisa May Alcott’s Work” 
  • Katie Waddell (University of Kentucky): “Waiting: Temporality and the Race Question in Louisa May Alcott and Rebecca Harding Davis” 
  • Sarah Gray (Langston University): “Market Negotiations: Rebecca Harding Davis’s and Louisa May Alcott’s Representations of Women, Work, and Marriage” 
  • Arielle Zibrak (University of Wyoming Casper): “‘Life and Labor’ in the 1870s: Davis and Alcott on Work” 
May 2016: American Literature Association
San Francisco, CA

Session 1: “Representations of Teaching and Learning in Alcott"
  • Anne Boyd Rioux (University of New Orleans): “Little Women In and Out of School” 
  • Daniel Shealy (University of North Carolina-Charlotte): ‘“Allurements of the Flesh’: Louisa Alcott on Popular Culture and the Education of Youth” 
  • Azelina Flint (University of East Anglia): “Resisting a Transcendental Education: Louisa May Alcott’s Feminist Self-Culture” 
  • Deanna Stover (Texas A&M University):“American Woman: Feminine Speech and the Reformation of National Identity in Louisa May Alcott’s An Old-Fashioned Girl” 
Session 2: "Alcott for Grown-Ups"
  • Chris Doyle (Central Connecticut State University), “Sensational Realism: Alcott’s A Long Fatal Love Chase,"
  • Alicia Beeson (University of North Carolina-Greensboro), “Bridging the Adult/Child Divide: ‘Transcendental Wild Oats’”
  • Sarah Wadsworth (Marquette University) "Diana and Persis and Roderick and Roland: Alcott, James, and the Roman Künstlerroman”
May 2015: American Literature Association
Boston, MA

Conversations: Fuller, Alcott, and Others
  • Katie Kornacki (University of Connecticut), “‘A Loving League of Sisters’: The Legacy of Margaret Fuller’s Boston Conversations in Louisa May Alcott's Work: A Story of Experience”
  • Marielena James (University of Pretoria, South Africa), “The Ideals of Companionate Marriage: A Conversation Between Louisa May Alcott and Margaret Fuller”
  • Helen Deese (Massachusetts Historical Society), “Caroline Healy Dall and the Mantle of Margaret Fuller”
Transatlantic Alcott
  • Beverly Lyon Clark (Wheaton College), “Picturing Europe in Little Women”
  • Ellen Campbell (Southern Illinois University Carbondale), “Revising the Marriage Plot in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women and George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda”
  • Charlene Avallone (Kailua Hawai’i), “Alcott Rewrites George Sand: Moods and Jacques”
May 2014: American Literature Association
Washington, DC

"'I Want Something To Do': Alcott, Whitman, and Nursing in the Nation’s Capital"
Chairs: Ed Folsom, University of Iowa, and Sandra Harbert Petrulionis, Penn State Altoona
  • Emily Waples (University of Michigan), “Nursing’s Domestic Grotesque: Alcott, Whitman, and the Civil War Wounded”
  • Sören Fröhlich (University of California San Diego), “The Pail Tells the Tale: Blood, Nursing, and the Remade Nation”
  • J.D. Isip, Texas (A & M University-Commerce), “‘This Heart’s Geography’s Map’: Alcott and Whitman Sketching an Affective Landscape”
"Louisa May Alcott’s Woman in the Nineteenth Century: Moods at 150"
Chair: Anne Phillips, Kansas State University
  • Daniel Shealy (University of North Carolina-Charlotte), "'Playing with edge tools': Teaching Louisa May Alcott’s Moods"
  • Christine Doyle (Central Connecticut State University), “Moods: ‘The Oversoul’ and Oysters”
  • Mary Lamb Shelden (Virginia Commonwealth University), "'Shakespeare’s Tragedies Became Her Study': Women’s Genius and the Marriage Question"
May 2013: American Literature Association
Boston, MA

"Celebrating the Sesquicentennial of Hospital Sketches: A Teaching Round Table"
Moderator: Daniel Shealy (University of North Carolina, Charlotte)
  • Mary Lamb Shelden (University College, Virginia Commonwealth University)
  • Shari Goldberg (University of Texas at Dallas)
  • James Hewitson (University of Tennessee)
  • Marlowe Daly-Galeano (Lewis-Clark State College)
  • Paul J. Medeiros (The Thoreau Society)
"Re-visioning Alcott: Her Impact on the Work of Later Writers and Artists"
Chair: Beverly Lyon Clark (Wheaton College [Mass.])
  • Gregory Eiselein (Kansas State University): “Louisa May Alcott, Patti Smith, and Punk Aesthetics”
  • Anne K. Phillips (Kansas State University): “‘Certainly Reminiscent of Alcott’s Little Women’: The Marches, the Penderwicks, and 'the Family Story as Genre”
  • Lauren Rizzuto (University of Florida): “‘Jo March Is Pregnant and Laurie’s the Father’: Fanfiction and Little Women”
November 2012: Society for the Study of American Women Writers
Denver, CO

“Louisa May Alcott’s Engaged Citizenship”
Chair: Mary Lamb Shelden (VA Commonwealth University)
  • Emily Dolan (University of CT): “Louisa May Alcott’s Rehabilitation of the Fallen Woman in Behind a Mask”
  • Emily Waples (University of Michigan): “The Child Citizen: Utopian Education and Louisa May Alcott’s Moods”
  • Amy M. Thomas (Montana State University): “Alcott and the Democracy of Literature: Parallel Writings in The Woman’s Journal and The Youth’s Companion”
May 2012: American Literature Association
San Francisco, CA

“Teaching Alcott in Survey and Seminar”
Chair: Mary Lamb Shelden (VA Commonweath University)
  • Gary Williams (University of Idaho): “Alcott, Julia Ward Howe, and the Ways Logs Turn to Ashes”
  • Mischa Renfroe (Middle Tennessee State University): “Teaching Alcott in ‘Law and Literature’”
  • Gregory Eiselein (Kansas State University): “Gender, Comedy, and Teaching Eight Cousins in the Alcott/Twain Seminar”
“Louisa May Alcott and Literary Theory”
Chair: Gregory Eiselein (Kansas State University)
  • Sean McAlister (University of British Columbia): “Moods and Masquerades: Alcott’s Emersonian Experiments”
  • Bruce Ronda (Colorado State University): “‘Little’: Souvenirs and Interiors in Eight Cousins”
  • Ilana Vine (New York University): “‘She Will Make a Charming Little Mother’: Oedipal Ties and Family Fictions in An Old-Fashioned Girl
May 2011: American Literature Association
Boston, MA

“Alcott and Other Authors”
Chair: Sandra Harbert Petrulionis (Penn State Altoona)
  • Yvonne Elizabeth Pelletier (University of Tennessee): “Alcott and the Byronic Figure”
  • Jennifer Gurley (LeMoyne College): “Resisting Emerson and Extending Ellen Sturgis Hooper”
  • Robert Arbour (Indiana University): “Nursing a Nation: The Wartime Sentimentality of Louisa May Alcott and Walt Whitman”
“Alcott as Pop Culture Icon”
Chair: Mary Lamb Shelden (VA Commonweath University)
  • Daniel Shealy (UNC Charlotte): “‘The Autograph Fiend is Abroad’: Louisa May Alcott and Fame”
  • Beverly Lyon Clark (Wheaton College): “Little Women Spinoffs a Century Ago; or, Beth Becomes an Entrepreneur”
  • Marlowe Daly-Galeano (University AZ): “Writing in the Movies: Jo March as an Author in Little Women Films”
May 2010, American Literature Association
San Francisco, CA

“Women’s Communities of Work in Alcott’s Circle”
Chair: Laura Dassow Walls (USC)
  • Mary Lamb Shelden (VA Commonwealth University): “‘Our Best Thanks to the Sewing Circle’: Concord Endeavors on Behalf of the Holley School for Freedmen”
  • Miki Pfeffer (University New Orleans): “Tilting towards Community: Writing Women at the World’s Fair in New Orleans, 1884-1885”
  • John Matteson (John Jay College, CUNY): “‘In the Face of Cruelest Facts’: Margaret Fuller, Working Girls, and the Trouble with Chastity”
May 2009: American Literature Association
Boston, MA

“Recent Alcott Scholarship”
Chair: Mary Lamb Shelden (VA Commonweath University)
  • Leslie Perrin Wilson (Concord Free Public Lib.): “Beyond Amy March: May Alcott as Artist”
  • Roberta Trites (Illinois State University): “Alcott and the Genesis of the Adolescent Reform Novel”
  • Daniel Shealy (University of NC Charlotte): “‘All America Seems To Be Abroad’: The Alcott Sisters’ European Tour”
“Roundtable: Making the Documentary Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women”
Chair: Sandra Harbert Petrulionis (Penn State Altoona)
  • Nancy Porter (Producer/Director)
  • Harriet Reisen (Producer/Director/Screenwriter)
  • Joel Myerson (University SC)
  • John Matteson (John Jay College, CUNY)
May 2008: American Literature Association
San Francisco, CA

“The Concord Reformers”
Chair: Sandra Harbert Petrulionis (Penn State Altoona)
  • Katherine Adams (University Tulsa): “Self Possession Rightly Understood: Property and Individuality in Two Alcott Utopias”
  • Jessica A. Isaac (University KS): “‘Little Almost Publics’: Louisa May Alcott’s Work and the Function(ing) of the American Family”
  • John Matteson (John Jay College, CUNY): “‘Hitherto Unexplored Crypts of Psychology’: The Alcotts and the Spiritual Healing Movement”
“Roundtable: Teaching Little Women”
Moderator: Mary Lamb Shelden (VA Commonweath University)
  • Anne Phillips (Kansas State University): “‘Borne out shrieking by the hero’ or ‘the villain’? Using Textual Variants from Little Women in the Classroom”
  • Anne Bruder (University NC Chapel Hill): “Texts and Contexts: Louisa May Alcott in the American Studies Classroom”
  • Gregory Eiselein (Kansas State University): “Contextualizing Little Women”
May 2007: American Literature Association
Boston, MA

“The Dramatic Alcotts”
Chair: Chair: Sandra Harbert Petrulionis (Penn State Altoona)
  • Jennie McDonald (University of Denver): “Gothic Elements and Movie Adaptations of ‘The Witch’s Curse’”
  • Laura King (University of Chicago): “Jo March as Playwright: Success or Sellout?”
  • Julie Wilhelm (University of CA Davis): “‘Don’t laugh, act as if it was all right!”: The Witch’s Curse and other Clumsy Gender Theatrics in Little Women”
“Orchard House, Historical and Imaginative”
Chair: Jan Turnquist (Orchard House)
  • Mary Lamb Shelden (Northern IL University): “Jo March: The Sanewoman in the Attic”
  • Caroline Hellman (CUNY): “Building Castles of Reform: Louisa May Alcott’s Material Feminism”
  • Callie Sadler Oppedisano (Tufts University): “What They Wore: ‘The Rival Prima Donnas’ to Roderigo”
November 2006: Society for the Study of American Women Writers
Philadelphia, PA

“Women’s Letters and the Culture of Reform”
Chair: Sandra Harbert Petrulionis (Penn State Altoona)
  • Helen Deese (Mass. Historical Soc.): “Reformers at Odds: Elizabeth Palmer Peabody and Caroline Healy Dall”
  • Mary De Jong (Penn State Altoona): Comment on Deese, re: Peabody and Dall in the correspondence of Anna Q. T. Parsons
  • Mary Lamb Shelden (No. ILL Univ): “‘In the Concord Barrel’: The Louisa May Alcott-Sallie Holley Correspondence”
  • Sandy Petrulionis (Penn State Altoona): Comment on Shelden, re: importance of letters for Concord women abolitionists
May 2006: American Literature Association
San Francisco, CA

“The Alcotts in Fiction”
Chair: Mary Lamb Shelden (Northern ILL University)
  • Janice Alberghene (Fitchburg State College): “Louisa and Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places”
  • Larry Carlson (College of Charleston): “Orpheus at War: March as Fictional(ized) History”
  • Daniel Shealy (University NC Charlotte): “‘The Curious Role of Lady Detective’: The Louisa May Alcott Mysteries”
May 2005: American Literature Association
Boston, MA

“Alcott in the New Century: Establishing a Louisa May Alcott Society”
Chair: Mary Lamb Shelden (VA Commonweath University)
  • Daniel Shealy (University NC Charlotte)
  • Joel Myerson (USC)
  • Sarah Elbert (SUNY Binghampton)