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The Catharine Maria
SEDGWICK SOCIETY Newsletter
In This Issue
Sedgwick Society Visions
Remarks by Lucinda Damon-Bach, Judith Fetterley, Deborah Gussman
Membership Information
Pedagogy Roundtable
Teaching Hope to Postmoderns, with Help from CS and Others
by Robert Daly
Recent Publications
Sedgwick's Influence
by Patricia Larson Kalayjian
Research in Progress; Notes and Queries
Symposium 1997 and Future Symposium Plans
Welcome!
About this time two years ago, Victoria Clements and I were finalizing the name tags and programs for the first ever Catharine Maria Sedgwick Symposium, held at the Red Lion Inn in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, June 6-8, 1997, just a few doors down from Sedgwick's home. This gathering in Sedgwick's native town was a long-cherished dream of mine that began with a sign-up sheet I circulated at NEMLA in Boston, 1995 and another at the landmark conference "19th-Century American Women Writers in the 21st Century" held at Trinity College in 1996, where Susan Harris introduced me to Victoria Clements. Thanks to Victoria's shared vision, shrewd intelligence, enthusiasm, and her incredible hard work, and the participation of most of you reading this newsletter, the Symposium was an exciting success, bringing together nearly 40 Sedgwick scholars and interested fans from across the nation to share research and interpretations of much of Sedgwick's work, including A New England Tale, Redwood, Hope Leslie, The Linwoods, Married or Single?, the first volume of her short stories, her letters, and didactic tracts such as Live and Let Live. At that time, many of us met to discuss the formation of a Sedgwick Society, and the production of an annual or semi-annual newsletter. We also declared our intent to organize another Symposium for 1999. Due to a variety of job-related challenges among several of us who volunteered to set up the society and newsletter (which have now been resolved), we are just now planning the next symposium. What follows is a compilation of various participants' reflections on the first Symposium, a glance at current work on Sedgwick (including the development of a Sedgwick web site), and thoughts for our future. -LLDB
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