Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers
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Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers
@legacy1984.bsky.social
220 followers 67 following 100 posts
In print since 1984, Legacy is the only scholarly journal to focus specifically on American women’s writing, broadly defined, from the seventeenth through the mid-twentieth century. Tag us if you need a re-skeet!
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legacy1984.bsky.social
💬 For all SSAWW attendees:

Our very own Travis Foster still has a few slots available for this year's edition of "Chat with an Editor" during the triannual SSAWW conference in Philadelphia! He will be there to answer all of your questions about Features.
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November 3, 2025 at 1:34 PM
legacy1984.bsky.social
It's only fitting that Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, author of many ghost stories and a play about the Salem trials, would have been born on Halloween! (October 31, 1852) 🎃

Read more about her with:
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October 31, 2025 at 10:40 AM
legacy1984.bsky.social
Announcement! 📣
Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers is happy to announce a contest to honor the best papers presented at the upcoming Society for the Study of American Women Writers conference (5-9 November 2025) in Philadelphia. 1/3
Fabulous Canva montage with torn paper effects and dried flowers over an orange background.
October 29, 2025 at 8:52 PM
legacy1984.bsky.social
It's time for a celebration of Sarah Josepha Hale, born on the October 24, 1788! 🎈
Enjoy readings of her work with:
- "Embodied Pedagogies: Femininity, Diversity, and Community in Anthologies of Women's Writing, 1836–2009" by Karen L. Kilcup - muse.jhu.edu/pub/17/artic... 1/3
October 24, 2025 at 9:10 AM
legacy1984.bsky.social
Happy (not quite) birthday to Hannah Crafts, whose precise date of birth is unknown (circa 1830), but who still deserves to be celebrated!
Read about Crafts with:
- "Addition by Subtraction: Toward a Literary History of Racial Representation" by Gene Andrew Jarrett: muse.jhu.edu/pub/17/artic...
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October 9, 2025 at 5:57 PM
legacy1984.bsky.social
Born on this day in 1825... the great Frances Ellen Watkins Harper!

You can of course still read our 2024 issue dedicated to Harper, introduced by Eric Gardner: muse.jhu.edu/pub/17/artic.... Available in open access!

But don't forget previous and equally excellent contributions on Harper:

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September 24, 2025 at 12:34 PM
legacy1984.bsky.social
Another birthday to celebrate today: Sarah Orne Jewett's! (Born in 1849!) 🌲🌲🌲

Here's a slew of great essays on one of Maine's most precious treasures :
- "Eunice and the Jade Gods: Jewett's Religious Rhetoric in A Country Doctor" by Terry Heller: muse.jhu.edu/pub/17/artic...

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September 3, 2025 at 7:02 PM
legacy1984.bsky.social
Do you want to celebrate Lydia Sigourney, born on this day in 1791? 🎈We suggest this great essay by Bryan Sinche, « Lydia Sigourney’s Lydia Sigourney’s Sailors and the Limits of Sentiment »: muse.jhu.edu/pub/17/artic... (if you do not have access to the article, send us a quick message!) 1/3
September 1, 2025 at 8:50 AM
legacy1984.bsky.social
New issue of Legacy is out, and open access! 🗞️
Click right here to access Volume 42, No 1:
muse.jhu.edu/issue/55448 !
On the menu:

- "Leaving Giants Unslain: Idle Activism in Catharine Sedgwick's The Linwoods and Other Writings" by Jordan L. Von Cannon

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August 29, 2025 at 2:07 PM
legacy1984.bsky.social
The SSAWW Graduate Student Caucus is excited to announce a new cycle for our Mentorship Match Program. This program, new to SSA WW last year, pairs dissertating graduate students with a faculty mentor who will read and provide feedback on two chapters of their dissertation during the 2025-2026 academic year. The program concludes with a series of online panels in Spring 2026 in which graduate students and their mentors showcase graduate students’ developing dissertation projects. This is a great opportunity for graduate students to obtain feedback on your work, make connections with faculty who are not at your institution, and share your dissertation project with a wider audience. If you are a dissertating graduate student interested in participating in this program during the upcoming 2025-2026 academic year, we ask that you complete this short form to give us more information on the dissertation project you are seeking mentorship on. This information will help us confirm your eligibility and find a fitting faculty match for your exciting work! Please complete the form by Friday, August 16 if you’d like to be considered for the 2025-2026 Mentorship Match Program. If you have any questions, please contact Jennifer Putzi (jlputz@wm.edu). If you are not interested in this program but would still like to be involved in SSAWW’s Graduate Student Caucus, please email Alice Martin (ajmartin@wcu.edu) to be added to the listserv.
July 8, 2025 at 9:34 AM
legacy1984.bsky.social
Are you a Phd student? Do you work on American women writers? Would you like to receive mentorship from some of the foremost specialists in the field? If yes, read below! ⬇️ ✨ 1/3
July 8, 2025 at 9:33 AM
legacy1984.bsky.social
All terrific pieces!
July 7, 2025 at 1:27 PM
legacy1984.bsky.social
Still in open access, from the latest issue of Legacy: the incredible forum on Louisa May Alcott's 1873 novel Work, introduced by Max L. Chapnick and Eagan Dean! Follow the link: muse.jhu.edu/pub/17/artic.... 1/3
Title page of Work: A Story of Experience by Louisa M. Alcott (First edition)
July 7, 2025 at 1:26 PM
legacy1984.bsky.social
- "'On the Threshold of a New Era': Frances Ellen Watkins Harper in Iowa," by Leslie A. Schwalm While scholarship on Harper tends to focus on her reflections about the South, Laslie Schwalm turns to lectures she gave in Keokuk, Iowa, as the small city was facing a cruel dilemna: closing its African school and integrating into formely White schools, or renouncing to the possibility of high school education so as the save the jobs of Black teachers. Schwalm shows how acutely Harper understood the sacrifices sometimes necessary to the fight for Black libertation, balancing the needs of the present and those of the future.
May 26, 2025 at 3:03 PM
legacy1984.bsky.social
- "We Need to Speak about Home: Frances Ellen Watkins Harper and Domestic Concerns," by Kristin Moriah Kriston Moriah tackles another extremely political dimension of Harper's legacy: the role of home in the firmness of one's identity as a citizen, particularly for runaway slaves feeling towards Canada. Having a home is a primary human need--and for that precise reason, it is denied to slaves. Harper, in poems and essays, writes about the necessity for her dispora to build makeshift, fugitive homes ; enclaves of belonging and freedom.
May 26, 2025 at 3:02 PM
legacy1984.bsky.social
- "Catalysts for Justice: The Enduring Prescience and Relevance of Frances Ellen Watkins Harper to Our World," by Lois Brown Reading the many causes by which Black Americans forever entraped within slavery died, as well as modern data on the probable life expenctancy of slaves, all of which fuelled Harper's dedication to the abolitionist fight, Lois Brown emphasizes the life-or-death intensity of antislavery work. And comparing Harper's concern for Black surmorality in the antebellum to more recent decades of harm caused by an excess of policing in Black communities, she makes clear that this intensity has never left the anti-racist fight.
May 26, 2025 at 3:01 PM
legacy1984.bsky.social
To continue the exploration of Legacy vol. 42 no. 2, I turn today to the incredible forum on F.E. Watkins Harper, whose 200th anniversary we will celebrate in September 2025! (This will be in two parts)
Signed photograph of F.E. Watkins Harper
May 26, 2025 at 3:00 PM
legacy1984.bsky.social
As promised, let's have a look together at the incredible contents of the latest issue of Legacy!
✏ Firstly: "Learning to Read American Women Writers" by Patricia Okker 1/3
May 23, 2025 at 11:07 AM
legacy1984.bsky.social
Volume 41, Number 2, 2024 of Legacy is online! 🎉 You can find the entire issue here: muse.jhu.edu/issue/53522 ! We'll be covering each piece and why you should reach them in the coming days!
May 13, 2025 at 11:52 AM
legacy1984.bsky.social
Is there a Legacy article that your read as a grad student and which radically changed the way you conduct your work? Some fine prose you wish to celebrate?

For the "Editors' Picks" series, we ask our readers and community to share articles that inspired them in their work and life, 1/2
May 9, 2025 at 12:26 PM
legacy1984.bsky.social
Last SSAWW pre-panel! If you haven't already, discover the brand new SSAWW mentorship program for graduate students! Click the link to register ⬇️

rutgers.zoom.us/meeting/regi...
April 20, 2025 at 6:25 PM
legacy1984.bsky.social
Look at the terrific lineup!

You can find the whole forum here: muse.jhu.edu/issue/40484 !
More great recommendations soon... 📚
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"Playing Pilgrims" - María Carla Sánchez “'[Even] Beth’s stage-struck!': Theatrical Little Women" - Anne K. Phillips "Jo’s Invisible Sisters" - Barbara McCaskill "Little Women, Made Small" - Laura M. Stevens "Her Bosom Enemy" - Cynthia Davis "Frado, Linda, Ellen, and Iola" - Cherene Sherrard-Johnson "My Meg’s Queer Turn" - Jean M. Lutes "Doing Nothing" - Alexandra Socarides “'Experiments'; or, 'Housekeeping ain’t no joke'” - Lorrayne Carroll "The Death of Pip" - Donna M. Campbell “'Hope, and Keep Busy': Little Women and Critical Pedagogy in the Era of Trump" - Randi Lynn Tanglen "Amy’s Dark Night" - Gregory Eiselein "Little Women’s Literary Lessons" - Sari Edelstein "In Defense of Young Balloons" - Katherine Adams "Serious Literature" - Catherine Keyser "Surprise, Surprise" - Deborah Gussman "The Magic Combination of Family and Books: Jo Lighting the Way" - Anne Boyd Rioux
April 12, 2025 at 9:30 AM
legacy1984.bsky.social
"I'm cheating a bit in my other choice because it is a series of pieces rather than an individual article: the "Little Women at 150" forum that I edited for Legacy 36.1, published in 2019. This forum was a breeze to put together because folks wanted to write about this novel. They had vivid memories of reading it as children or teaching it in the classroom. Many wrote about their abiding love for the characters or about growing out of that love and realizing that Louisa May Alcott was not, despite their childhood identification with the characters (mostly Jo!), writing about them. From Barbara McCaskill's beautiful meditation on gloves and Black female respectability to Randi Lynn Tanglen's adaptation of Marmee's "Hope and keep busy!" in the early days of the first Trump administration, this forum is, like Little Women, worth revisiting."
April 12, 2025 at 9:28 AM
legacy1984.bsky.social
EDITORS' PICK N°2!
Today's your lucky day because you bring you more great reads! Here's Jennifer Putzi's second choice for our "Editors' Pick" series:

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April 12, 2025 at 9:27 AM
legacy1984.bsky.social
Second SSAWW pre-panel! The first one was truly wonderful, so you *really* don't want to miss this! Just click the link to register:
rutgers.zoom.us/meeting/regi...
April 6, 2025 at 6:23 PM