Keynote speakers:
Professor Isabelle Bour (Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris III)
Professor Helen Chambers  (University of St Andrews)
Professor Dena Goodman (University of Michigan)

Proposals Invited
Proposals are invited for an interdisciplinary two-day conference to be held at Chawton House Library, Hampshire, 22nd and 23rd May 2008. The event is jointly organised by the University of Southampton English Discipline, the University of Warwick French Department and Swansea University German Section.

The conference is one in a series being held in conjunction with the Netherlands Research Organisation (NWO) project "New Approaches to European Women's Writing" which is based at the University of Utrecht and is directed by Dr Suzan van Dijk.

The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries saw an explosion of interest in Europe in foreign languages and literatures, and recent research has begun to explore the part played by women in cross-cultural interchange. This conference seeks to examine the trans-national links between literary women in Europe in the period 1700-1900. To what extent were women writers from different countries aware of each other and each other's work? We invite papers which look at women who read or were inspired by the work of women abroad, as well as papers exploring actual links (for example, through correspondence, visits or contact in the salons) between women writers of different nationalities.

Papers should be a maximum of 20 minutes and should be given in English. Please send a 250-word abstract for the attention of the organisers Katherine Astbury, Hilary Brown and Gillian Dow to the conference administrator Sandy White at the following email address:
(important - please remove each X in the following email address before sending. It has been added as a spam protection measure)
 Xsw17@soton.ac.ukX


The deadline for abstracts is 7th January 2008.

Funding from the NWO and Chawton House Library will enable us to waive the conference fee for speaking delegates.

Selected papers will be published in a special issue of the journal Women's Writing.