Vegetative Louisa May Alcott (MMLA Convention)
Milwaukee, WI
Organization: Midwest Modern Language Association
Event: MMLA Convention
Vegetative Louisa May Alcott
Panel Organizer: Joe Hansen
Deadline for Submission: April 25, 2025
Contact Email: jhansen5@luc.edu
This panel seeks to coalesce a body of work upon the vegetative world of Louisa May Alcott. What is Alcott’s relationship to various plants and plant products in her life and writings? She makes wide usage of a variety of vegetation in her works, from the poisonous flower that dooms Evelyn to a vegetative state in “Lost in a Pyramid, or the Mummy’s Curse,” to the hashish that brings together Mr. Done and Rose in “Perilous Play,” to the “frostbitten apple” that falls from a bough at the end of Transcendental Wild Oats, itself a vegetatively titled work parodying the vegetatively titled Fruitlands experiment. All of this is not even to mention the plethora of vegetative imagery in Flower-Fables. Is there a consistent approach to vegetation as a concept that Alcott takes, or does she have many approaches? Are flowers different from fruit? Does every rose have its thorn?
Paper topics may include, but are not limited to, Alcott on...
Plants as poisons/medicines
Plants as food
Planting as labor
Plants as environment/scenery
Plants as symbols
Distinctions between plants
Gardens
Vegetative states
Plant-induced psychedelic states
Children’s literature and plants
Invasive plants/plants as colonial effect
For consideration for the panel, please submit an abstract (250-350 words) to Joe Hansen (jhansen5@luc.edu) via an email with the subject MMLA Abstract by April 25, 2025. Current membership in the Midwest Modern Language Association is not required to submit, but all presenters must be members by the time of the convention.
The Midwest Modern Language Association Convention, “The Humanities is Where Hope Lives,” takes place November 14-16, 2025, in Milwaukee, WI at Marquette University. While primarily an in-person event, the schedule will include a limited number of fully virtual sessions held throughout the convention. Please include in your abstract submission whether or not you can attend the conference in-person.
Joe Hansen
