Molly P. Rozum is associate professor and Ronald M. Nelson Chair of Great Plains and South Dakota history at the University of South Dakota in Vermillion. She teaches courses on United States women, the Great Plains, the American West, and South Dakota. She earned a Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a B.A. from the University of Notre Dame. Her research interests center on comparative United States-Canadian northern grasslands, and her book, Grasslands Grown: Sense of Place and Regional Identity on North America’s Canadian Prairies and American Plains, 1870–1950, was published in 2021. Rozum is a native of Mitchell, South Dakota.

UC Santa Cruz Presidential Chair, Shelley Stamp, is the author of Movie-Struck Girls: Women and Motion Picture Culture after the Nickelodeon (a finalist for the Theatre Library Association Book Award) and Lois Weber in Early Hollywood, winner of the Michael Nelson Prize from the International Association for Media and History and the Richard Wall Special Jury Prize from the Theatre Library Association. She curated the 6-disk set Pioneers: First Women Filmmakers, honored with a Special Award from the New York Film Critics Circle. She is also Founding Editor of Feminist Media Histories: An International Journal, published quarterly by the University of California Press, and an accompanying book series also published by UC Press. Her research has been funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and a University of California President’s Fellowship. Stamp is Professor of Film + Digital Media at UC Santa Cruz, where she won the Excellence in Teaching Award.

Join panelists Molly Rozum, Richard Millington, Charmion Gustke, and Matthew Cella as they explore our Spring Conference topic, "Ending the 'First Cycle': Cather's Changing Frontier." Moderated by Dr. James Jaap of the University of Pennsylvania, our Spring Conference Academic Director, this traditionally unstructured panel allows for significant exchange and inquiry into the larger questions surrounding our conference:

• Why do Cather's words matter?
• How does her work shape our understanding of the American Frontier?
• What can she tell us about our experiences today?

Speakers:

• Molly Rozum (Speaker), University of South Dakota
• Matthew Cella (Speaker), Shippensburg University
• Charmion Gustke (Speaker), Belmont University
• James Jaap (Speaker), Penn State Greater Allegheny, Teaching Professor of English and Assistant Chief Academic Officer
• Richard Millington (Speaker), Smith College

The Bel Canto Duo's Saturday evening performance will include original compositions inspired by A Lost Lady, "Nebraska: The End of the First Cycle," April Twilights, and One of Ours, publications that defined Willa Cather's 50th year and also shaped the latter half of a literary career that we are still celebrating 100 years later. The Bel Canto Duo will perform on Saturday, June 3rd at the Red Cloud Opera House. Tickets are sold in addition to conference registration. 

The Bel Canto Duo was founded in 2016 by Darci Griffith Gamerl (oboe/English horn) and Grammy-nominated cellist, David Downing. The duo provides a rich tapestry of sound, with a variety of selections that feature us as soloist artists, and as a duo. Their music features a wide variety of selections from original works, to arrangements of classical compositions and selections from film, broadway and opera.

Red Cloud

Rooms at Green Acres Motel in Red Cloud can be reserved by calling 402-746-2201.

Hastings

A block of rooms is available at the Holiday Inn Express in nearby Hastings at a rate of $129/night. To reserve, call 402-463-8858 before May 1 and mention the Willa Cather Spring Conference.

Additional Spring Conference Lodging Options

• Trouvaille Lodge (14 miles) Lebanon, KS 210-551-9113
• Blue Hill Motel (18 miles) Blue Hill, NE 402-756-3901
• Griffin’s Nest (22 miles) Lebanon, KS
• Drop Tyne Lodge (23 miles) Franklin, NE 308-425-6269
• Victorian Inn (28 miles) Superior, NE 402-879-3245
• Peaceful Rustic 2 Br Guesthouse (29 miles) Ayr, NE
• Buckshot Inn (34 miles) Smith Center, KS 785-282-6644
• Ingleboro Mansion (34 miles) Smith Center, KS 910-233-3930
• Prairie Winds Motel (33 miles) Smith Center, KS 785-282-6608
• Skyline Hunting Lodge 515 N Main St, Smith Center, KS 785-282-6790
• Crest-Vue Motel (40 miles) Mankato, KS 785-378-3515
• West Lake Inn (42 miles), Downs, KS 785-454-3345
• Shady Grove Cabins (41 miles) Downs, KS 785-454-6367
• Howell House (41 miles) Downs, KS 785-454-3888

Complex and Brilliant: Cather at 150

“If her image flashed into his mind, it came with a brightness of dark eyes, her pale triangular cheeks with long earrings, and her many-coloured laugh. When he was dull, dull and tired of everything, he used to think that if he could hear that long-lost lady laugh again, he would be gay." —A Lost Lady

Our 68th annual Willa Cather Spring Conference, held during Willa Cather's sesquicentennial year, marks several important anniversaries, and provides an opportunity to pay homage to the author's life and legacy in Nebraska. Cather’s book of poetry, April Twilights and Other Poems was revised and published in February 1923, and A Lost Lady, the story of Marian Forrester and her life in a dying Western railroad town, was first serialized in Century in the Spring of 1923, then published by Knopf in September. As the follow-up to her 1922 Pulitzer Prize-winning One of Ours, A Lost Lady was immediately praised, one critic hailing it as “Miss Cather’s masterpiece.” The only one of her novels made into film in her lifetime, one hundred years later, A Lost Lady remains one of Cather’s finest, a stunning portrait of a troubled woman in changing times. Later that same year, Cather’s, “Nebraska: The End of the First Cycle” was published in The Nation. Both a remembrance of the Nebraska of her childhood and an appraisal of a state now “stamped with the ugly crest of materialism,” the essay provides as much of an opportunity to celebrate Cather’s writing and re-examine her place in the American literary canon as A Lost Lady.

The directors invite papers on a variety of topics related to commemorating Cather's 150th birthday by examining the evolution of her own writerly imagination, including but not limited to the following areas:

● The Year 1923: Cather at 50
● Reframing A Lost Lady at 100

○ Publishing history, public reception, and critical appraisals

○ Advances in scholarship since the publication of the 1997 Scholarly Edition

○ The Complete Letters and A Lost Lady: New Insights and New Perspectives

○ A Lost Lady, “Nebraska: The End of the First Cycle” and the colonial settlement patterns of the American West

○ “The Novel Démeublé” and A Lost Lady: Parallels and Practices

○ A Lost Lady, American Imperialism, and Native Americans

○ Intersections of race, class, gender, sexuality, and disability in A Lost Lady

● Nebraska on the Page

○ Cather's depiction of small town life, people, and places in A Lost Lady and other Red Cloud texts.

○ Nebraska History and A Lost Lady—Beyond Prototypes and Settings

○ Nebraska and Webster County railroad history

● Cather, post-frontier Nebraska, and Western literature

● Cather and Fitzgerald; A Lost Lady and The Great Gatsby—Facts and Fiction

● Cather and Film; Cather and Hollywood—Connections and Critiques

● Portraiture and public letters–Cather’s evolution into a public figure

● Pedagogical approaches to A Lost Lady and other Cather texts

● The year 2073–Imagining Cather at 200

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 emailed to Rachel Olsen, Director of Education and Engagement, at rolsen@willacather.org by March 1, 2023. 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 digital programming to our audiences. Accepted speakers are asked, therefore, to prepare a video recording of their paper for submission by May 22, 2023, for our digital conference platform. Questions may be directed to Rachel or Dr. James Jaap, Academic Director of the 2023 Spring Conference, at jaj15@psu.edu.