The 33rd Annual 18th- and 19th-Century
British Women Writers Conference
BWWC
2025
Transformations
DATES /
May 15-17, 2025
LOCATION /
Sioux Falls, South Dakota
HOSTS /
South Dakota State University
University of South Dakota
Theme
BWWC 2025 will focus on the theme “Transformations” as it relates to texts produced by women, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming individuals within global and transatlantic contexts during the long eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The organizers wish to consider how these texts represent, reflect, and embody transformation, as well as how they have proved and continue to prove transformative. How might the study of these texts generate transformation within the classroom, academic programs and disciplines, educational institutions, and academia at large? How might this work contribute to social, political, and ecological transformation at a time when efforts to address humanitarian and environmental crises are routinely and systematically met with resistance? What transformations must occur to ensure that the conditions of academic work are just, humane, ethical, and equitable?
Call for Proposals
Deadline for submission: December 15, 2024
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BWWC 2025 is currently accepting proposals for individual papers and panels. Please review our call for proposals and submission guidelines prior to submitting a proposal. As detailed in our CFP, organizers also invite proposals for a limited number of preformed panels featuring undergraduate research. Proposals may be submitted using the link to our submission form. Please don't hesitate to contact us with questions about or issues with the submission process.
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Quick Links:
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The BWWC 2025 Call for Proposals
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The BWWC 2025 Proposal Submission Guidelines
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The BWWC 2025 Proposal Submission Form
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Keynote Speakers
Lisa Hager
Dr. Hager is an Associate Professor of English and Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee at Waukesha. Their current book project focuses on representations of transgender identities in Victorian literature, and they have published articles on Victorian sexology, the New Woman, aestheticism and decadence, steampunk, digital humanities, and trans and queer studies. Dr. Hager teaches courses in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British literature, women’s literature, science fiction and fantasy literature, steampunk literature and culture, popular culture, feminism, and LGBTQ+ studies, and they serve as an editor for Prose Studies: History, Theory, Criticism.
Megan Peiser
Dr. Peiser is an enrolled citizen of Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. She’s Associate Professor of English at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan. Her work is centered on telling stories of historically and currently marginalized women using archival research, oral history, and lived traditions. Her monograph, The Review Periodical and British Women Novelists, 1790–1820, and accompanying database are forthcoming from Johns Hopkins University Press, and she is the comanager with Emily Spunaugle of the Marguerite Hicks Project. Peiser’s recent work on Indigenous perspectives in/of the eighteenth century can be found in Eighteenth-Century Fiction, Eighteenth-Century Theory and Interpretation, and The Los Angeles Review of Books. Peiser is active in the Indigenous food sovereignty movement and serves the intertribal community of Metro-Detroit as cochair of Oakland University’s Native American Advisory Committee. She lives and works on the traditional and ancestral homelands of the Anishinaabe peoples in what is currently called Detroit, Michigan.
Kerry Sinanan
Dr. Sinanan is an Assistant Professor in Global Pre-1800 Literature and Culture at the University of Winnipeg. Her work focuses on the Black Atlantic, Caribbean slavery and race, and Black resistance and abolition within a global context and up to the present time. She is completing a monograph entitled Myths of Mastery: Traders, Planters and Colonial Agents, 1750–1834 and editing a new edition of The History of Mary Prince (1831) for Broadview Press. Dr. Sinanan leads workshops on developing antiracist pedagogical practices, undisciplining eighteenth- and nineteenth-century studies, and decolonizing the curriculum.
Venue
Hilton Garden Inn
Sioux Falls Downtown
Located on the banks of the Big Sioux River, the Hilton Garden Inn Sioux Falls Downtown is just a few miles from the Sioux Falls Regional Airport and within walking distance of numerous downtown shops and restaurants.
Accommodations
Conference Hotel: Hilton Garden Inn Downtown Sioux Falls
A room block for conference attendees is available at the Hilton Garden Inn Downtown with a discounted room rate of $179 per night. To take advantage of this rate, please reserve your room by April 16, 2025, using the link below. For assistance with their reservation, attendees may also call the hotel's personal reservation line at 605-444-4704.
Other Accommodations in Downtown Sioux Falls
For attendees who are interested in exploring other hotel options, there are several to choose from in downtown Sioux Falls, all of them within a short walk of the conference venue. These include:
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Country Inn and Suites (3 minute walk)
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Hotel on Phillips (5 minute walk)
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Holiday Inn Sioux Falls - City Centre (6 minute walk)​
Steering Committee
Jessica Berg, South Dakota State University
​Katherine Malone, South Dakota State University
​Terra McQuillen, South Dakota State University
​Lisa Ann Robinson, University of South Dakota
​Taya Sazama, University of South Dakota
​Sharon Smith, South Dakota State University
Sponsors
South Dakota Humanities Council
South Dakota State University College or Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences
South Dakota State University Griffith Foundation
South Dakota State University School of English and Interdisciplinary Studies
University of South Dakota College of Arts and Sciences
University of South Dakota Department of English
University of South Dakota Office of Academic Affairs​