Calls for Proposals

Call for Applications: Nebraska Cather Collaborative Research Grants for Willa Cather Scholarship (2025)

The Cather Project of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) English Department, in cooperation with the Willa Cather Archive of the UNL Libraries and the National Willa Cather Center (NWCC) in Red Cloud, announces the availability of research grants for visiting scholars. These grants provide financial support for scholars to travel to and reside in Nebraska for one to four weeks to conduct research on Willa Cather in UNL Archives and Special Collections and in the Archive of the NWCC. Scholars from advanced doctoral students through senior faculty are invited to apply.

Proposed projects should reflect the need to conduct research in UNL Archives and Special Collections, although researchers are also encouraged to conduct research at the NWCC and to experience Cather’s Nebraska hometown during their residence. Red Cloud is 2 ½ hours from Lincoln by car. Successful applicants will be awarded $1,200 per week for up to four weeks. The deadline for submission of materials is DECEMBER 1, 2024, and we will inform successful applicants by DECEMBER 15, 2024. Weeks in residence, which need not be consecutive, should fall between January 1, 2025 and December 31, 2025.

The Cather Project will assist successful applicants with advice about travel and lodging. When successful applicants are in residence, they will receive advice and guidance from scholars associated with the Cather Project and the Willa Cather Archive and, depending on schedule and availability, have the opportunity to present their work in progress.

The Cather Project produces the Willa Cather Scholarly Edition and Cather Studies, both published by the University of Nebraska Press. The Willa Cather Archive is a digital project dedicated to study of Willa Cather's life and writings and the home of The Complete Letters of Willa Cather. The Archives and Special Collections of the UNL Libraries holds the largest collection of letters from and to Cather; edited typescripts and manuscripts of her works; multiple editions of her works; and many other Cather-associated materials. For more on these collections, see the finding aids for the various Cather-related collections. The growing archive of the National Willa Cather Center includes books, letters, photographs, and personal items. Information about these collections can be accessed here.

These grants are funded by the Willa Cather Fund, the Roberta and James Woodress Fund, and the Rosowski Cather Fund, all of which are administered by the University of Nebraska Foundation. When schedule and availability permits, the NWCC may provide in-kind support in the form of housing in Red Cloud.

To apply, please send to Professor Melissa J. Homestead (mhomestead2@unl.edu), Director of the Cather Project, as e-mail attachments (PDF preferred) the following items:

•your c.v. (please limit to 2 pages)

•an application statement of no more than 3 pages describing your proposed research project and the importance of materials and resources at UNL and the NWCC to your project (please be specific).

Please address questions about these grants to Melissa Homestead

All Together Different: Reading Willa Cather Across Regions

Milwaukee, Wisconsin, June 25-27, 2025

Conference co-directors: Melissa J. Homestead, University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Kelsey Squire, Ohio Dominican University

2025 is the centennial of the publication of Willa Cather’s novel The Professor’s House, a novel that traverses regions in action and in memory: an Midwestern university town in an unnamed state on Lake Michigan, cattle and mesa country in Northern New Mexico, and the grasslands of Kansas. We take our title and the conference’s location from the titular professor’s recollection of the difficulty of explaining Lake Michigan to his friends in France: "it is altogether different. It is a sea, and yet it is not salt. It is blue, but quite another blue. Yes, there are clouds and mists and sea-gulls, but—I don't know, il est toujours plus naïf." The Program Committee of the 2025 Cather Seminar invites proposals for papers on Cather’s relationship to region, broadly construed, and especially papers that propose to read across region in Cather’s works and life. Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

• Blue humanities and Lake Michigan as an inland sea

• Bioregionalsm and sustainability

• Industrialization and the Rustbelt

• Literary regionalism: Cather’s relationship to earlier literary regionalism and to regional traditions of the twentieth century

• Geospatial humanities: using digital tools to explore region in Cather’s life and works

• Settler colonial studies: displacement of indigenous peoples, land grant universities

• Ecocriticsm and environmental humanities

• The rise of cultural anthropology and Cather’s understanding of place

Graduate students and scholars new to Cather’s work are encouraged to make proposals. Scholarships will be available for select student presenters from the National Willa Cather Center and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Scholars should submit a proposal of no more than 500 words by January 15, 2025. Proposals can be submitted by clicking "Submit Your Proposal" below and completing the provided Google Form. Decisions about acceptance to the conference will be communicated in early 2025.

SUBMIT YOUR PROPOSAL

Cather's House: Examining Built and Natural Environments in Her Work

As both The Professor’s House and My Ántonia are set for big years in 2025—the latter will complete its run as part of the NEA’s Big Read Initiative while the former, Cather’s midlife masterpiece, turns 100—these two novels will share the spotlight at the forthcoming Willa Cather Spring Conference. We encourage scholars and artists to pay special attention to built and natural environments within them, as well as throughout Cather’s life and work. From the Blue Mesa’s Cliff City to the house(s) that give the book its title, The Professor’s House explores the ways built environments both shape and reflect a person’s experience and character. And then there is Jim’s problematic suggestion in My Ántonia that the prairie is nothing but land waiting for development, that it is “the material out of which countries are made.” The observation both debases the ecology of a “natural environment” and effaces the nations that have long called that “unmade” place home. 

The directors invite papers on a variety of topics related to Cather and built and natural environments, including but not limited to the following notions:

• Architecture, gardens, and the arrangement of space
• Settler Colonialism in the the life and work of Willa Cather  
• Ecocritical approaches, especially in relation to land ethics and environmental stewardship
• “The Novel Démeublé,” whether literally or figuratively 
• Placemaking, Town Building and Immigration
• Literary Tourism and Red Cloud  
• Regional identity, regional difference 
• Domesticity and homemaking in Cather’s work

Proposals of no more than 500 words should describe papers or presentations approximately twenty minutes long. Innovative formats are encouraged. Abstracts, along with a short bio, your contact information and institutional affiliation, should be submitted to Rachel Olsen, Director of Education and Engagement, via the 2025 Spring Conference Proposal Form by March 1, 2025.

Responses to proposals will be sent by mid-March. At this time we intend to offer an in-person conference but remain committed to offering a selection of digital programming to our audiences. Presenters at the 2025 Annual Spring Conference should prepare six to eight slides to accompany their paper. In order to meet the accessibility needs of our attendees, presenters will be required to use a microphone during their scheduled presentation. Questions may be directed to Rachel Olsen or Todd Richardson, Academic Advisor of the 2025 Spring Conference, at rolsen@willacather.org or toddrichardson@unomaha.edu. 

Cather Seminar 2025: Call for Proposals

The International Willa Cather Seminar Leadership Committee invites proposals for the 19th International Willa Cather Seminar, to be held in 2025. Seminar directors work alongside National Willa Cather Center staff to create a one-of-a-kind conference experience for Cather scholars and enthusiasts in locations central to Willa Cather's life and writing. Past seminars have been held in Red Cloud, Lincoln, and Nebraska City, Nebraska; Santa Fe; Quebec City; Frederick County, Virginia; Bread Loaf Campus of Middlebury College, Vermont; Paris and Provence, France; Flagstaff, Arizona; Northampton, Massachussetts; Chicago; and New York City. Seminars are expected to last 2-3 days and blend concurrent sessions of academic papers, keynote lectures, tours of Cather related sites, performances, public events, and social activities.

We ask for succinct 2-3 page proposals that include the names of directors, their academic status, brief summary of their Cather scholarly and other related experience, justification of site appropriateness for Cather studies, explanation of proposed theme, and specifics on institutional partnership and sponsorship potential. Preference will be given to proposals that demonstrate strong institutional partnership, sponsorship potential, and sufficient local infrastructure for an academic conference (transportation, dining, lodging, and entertainment options). 

The International Willa Cather Center Seminar Leadership Committee (a partnership between the National Willa Cather Center and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln) collaborates with, advises, and supports directors and partner institutions in order to ensure that seminar experiences are successful and satisfying for all. The Committee will also contribute to the financial resources needed to run the conference. 

For questions or to submit a proposal, please contact Rachel Olsen, Director of Education and Engagement for the Willa Cather Foundation (rolsen@willacather.org). Deadline for proposals is January 31, 2024.