Talks & Trips

This short talk will be part of roundtable (which begins at 1:30) during an event celebrating the 50th anniversary of the first awarded PhD from the UNH English Department, where I completed my doctoral work. My presentation will focus on some "hows & whys" of research for my latest book Engaging Italy: American Women's Utopian Visions and Transnational Networks. The event runs from 10 a.m. through 4:30.

This conversation on the Unsung History podcast with Kelly Therese Pollack focuses on what drove me to write Engaging Italy, why I selected the three women in it, and how literature intertwines with history. The three women's lives and the book's relevance today are also part of the conversation. The podcast be found on any platform where you find podcasts and here.

These hands-on sessions, co-facilitated with Dr. Deborah Cox,  require no prior writing classes or skills. The goal is to foster creativity and emotional health. The four one-hour sessions during a twelve-week period (January-March) employ techniques from Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way and from expository writing classes. The sessions were set up for a private organization and designed for a small group. Interested in a future workshop? Contact Etta.

This interview on the writing of Engaging Italy: American Women's Utopian Visions and Transnational Networks is part of the BIO podcast series.

A conversation with Reconceive podcast hosts Dr. Deborah Cox and Tracy Maxfield, on writing as a therapeutic practice. Numerous studies point to regular writing as a way to improve our health and well-being. Given burnout in healthcare professionals, writing offers an affordable way to move stress and emotion onto the page, clearing our minds for more creative and enjoyable work. In this episode, Deborah and Tracy interview author, professor, and writing coach, Dr. Etta Madden, about the practice of regular writing for healing and apply the writing concepts to helping professionals.

This online talk, drawn from Engaging Italy: American Women's Utopian Visions and Transnational Networks, will focus on Emily Bliss Gould, founder and fundraiser for an industrial school and orphanage in Rome.  The audience will be an online group--mostly academics--that focuses on "transatlantic" women writers. See the Transatlantic Literary Women website for more information about connecting.

Emily Bliss Gould (1825-1875) with Venetian Bartoli children, from Italo-American Schools at Rome [1874], New-York Historical Society.

Part of this year's Missouri Humanities Symposium, Sustenance and Sustainability, at Drury University. I will provide an historical overview of utopian foodways. The talk highlights dreams individuals and communities have shared about food. From dreams of Edenic abundance to the contemporary explosion of urban gardens, people through the centuries have centered their lives upon desires to eat better. What "better" means varies from person to person and group to group: having plenty, having healthy habits, eating with others, or eating less.

This presentation draws from Eating in Eden: Food and American Utopias as well as my "Food" essay in The Palgrave Handbook of Utopian and Dystopian Literatures (2022).

The talk is free and open to the public. Registration is requested (required for streaming the presentation).

This talk focuses on letters Caroline Crane Marsh and her sister Lucy exchanged during the Civil War, when Caroline lived in Italy and Lucy witnessed the ravages of family, friends, and strangers near her St. Louis, Missouri, home.

It's part of the Society for the Study of American Women Writers conference in Baltimore. The presentation will be streamed, but audience members must be registered for the conference to receive the link.

This virtual presentation will comment on Rod Dreher’s bestselling book, The Benedict Option (2017), as it connects to traditions of communal life and utopian visions.

As part of a panel at the Communal Studies Association (CSA) annual conference, the presentation will be accessible to those who have registered for the conference.

This presentation at the American Literature Association Conference will juxtapose the writings and travels of black itinerant preacher Rebecca Cox Jackson (1795-1871) and white translator and poet Caroline Crane Marsh (1819-1901) with brief references to Transcendentalist Margaret Fuller’s writings and travels. Jackson’s dream visions (1830s-50s) and Marsh’s publications demonstrate the ways in which writing empowered both women, in spite of their cultural positions in the antebellum US.