Current CsFP:

Call for Proposals:

The Elizabeth Oakes Smith Travel Fellowship, 2024-2025

The Elizabeth Oakes Smith Society invites proposals from scholars interested in incorporating the life and work of Elizabeth Oakes Smith (1806-1893) into their projects.  With the expanding EOS website, the appearance of Elizabeth Oakes Smith: Selected Writings, Volumes I and II in March 2023 and 2024, and a mass of new material available to scholars studying Oakes Smith’s life and work, scholarship focused on Elizabeth Oakes Smith is expanding quickly.

This fellowship is available to all whose work will advance Oakes Smith studies: graduate students, independent scholars, or current professionals in the field. It may be particularly helpful to Ph.D. candidates completing chapters on women writers for dissertations whose topics intersect with Oakes Smith’s long life and career.

Possible projects might involve literary history, archival recovery of Oakes Smith as a professional writer or political leader, comparative studies involving Oakes Smith and other more well-known writers of the 19th century, Civil War history, or film and art projects related to any of these topics.

The Fellowship provides $2000 for a scholar to visit one or more of the following destinations where Oakes Smith’s papers and publications are housed:

Funds are intended to cover travel expenses, accommodation costs, and research fees for a period of up to two weeks. The scholar is expected to produce a report on their research findings and outcomes within six months of completing their trip. Work may take the form of a dissertation chapter, conference paper, a creative project, or a public presentation. The recipient’s report will be published on the Society’s website and newsletter, and recipients will be invited to present their work in upcoming Oakes Smith panels at national and international conferences.

To apply, please submit the following documents by email to VP of Communciations for the Oakes Smith Society, Zabrina Shkurti (zshkurti@usf.edu), by January 31, 2025:

  • A cover letter that introduces yourself and your project

  • A proposal that describes your research question, methodology, objectives, expected outcomes, and relevance to Oakes Smith’s life and work (maximum 1000 words)

  • A budget that outlines your estimated travel expenses, accommodation costs, and research fees

  • A curriculum vitae that highlights your academic or professional background, publications, awards, and relevant experience

The proposals will be evaluated by all Society officers and a select committee of published Oakes Smith scholars. The evaluation criteria will include:

  • The originality and significance of the research question or approach

  • The feasibility and soundness of the methodology

  • The clarity and coherence of the objectives and expected outcomes

  • The contribution to the appreciation and understanding of Oakes Smith’s life and work

  • The adequacy and reasonableness of the budget

The successful applicant will be notified by March 1, 2025. Funds must be used within one year of receiving the notification.

For more information about the Elizabeth Oakes Smith Society and its activities, please visit our website.

We are eager to support research involving this provocative pioneer as her figure re-emerges in the 21st century and look forward to receiving your proposal.

CALL FOR PAPERS: The Oakes Smith Society Graduate and Undergraduate Study Series

The Elizabeth Oakes Smith Society is interested in short (15-20 minute) paper presentations by students—both graduate and undergraduate—on any aspect of Oakes Smith’s life and work. Preference will be given to papers that relate Oakes Smith’s work to more canonical or better known figures of her time.

The Oakes Smith Society will periodically host a series of remote panels (via ZOOM) to give student researchers opportunities to share their work with faculty and independent scholars in a “professional” forum without the travel costs.

This is an open call. Dates of events to be determined when sufficient submissions are accepted.

Queries, or full abstracts of 200 words or less should be sent to rjaroff@ursinus.edu.

Past conference panels:

ALA, 2024—Chicago, IL

Amazons or Angels, Nature or Nurture: Raising Children in Gilman and Oakes Smith

Chair:  Cynthia Patterson, University of South Florida

“Conflicting Maternal Ideologies in Feminist Utopias: Oakes Smith’s “Amazons of Mexico” and Gilman’s Herland,” Zabrina Shkurti, University of South Florida

"Elizabeth Oakes Smith's Post-War Handbook to Not So Gentle Parenting,” Nicole Musselman, University of South Florida

“Considerations on Eugenics and Disability in the work of Elizabeth Oakes Smith,” Timothy H. Scherman, Northeastern Illinois University

ALA, 2023—Boston, MA

Elizabeth Oakes Smith, Embattled

Chair:  Cynthia Patterson, University of South Florida

“’Oakes Smith’s ‘Katahdin’ as a Gendered Response to Thoreau’s ‘Ktaadn and the Maine Woods,’” Rebecca Jaroff, Ursinus College

“Oakes Smith’s ‘Hints for Parents’ as a Challenge to her ‘Sinless Child,” Zabrina Shkurti, University of South Florida

“Elizabeth Oakes Smith’s Private Civil War,” Jon White, Christopher Newport University

“A Marriage Never Recognized: Fuller v. Oakes Smith; Fuller and Oakes Smith,” Timothy Scherman, Northeastern Illinois University

ALA, 2021—Boston, MA

Elizabeth Oakes Smith’s Feminist 50s: The Theatre, The Novel, and The Egeria (

“Feminist Figures for the New York Stage: Public Strategies in Oakes Smith’s plays Old New York, The Roman Tribute, and Destiny,” Kyle Rogers, Independent Scholar, Chicago

“The Political Economy of Early Feminist Journalism: the Disappearance of The Egeria, and the Birth of The Una, January 1853,” Timothy H. Scherman, Northeastern Illinois University

“Zenobia’s Retort: Oakes Smith’s Bertha and Lily (1854) as response to Hawthorne’s Blithesdale Romance (1852),” Heriberto Pelaez, Northeastern Illinois University

ALA, 2018—San Francisco, CA

Repeat, Revise, Resist: The Work of Elizabeth Oakes Smith’s Late Indian Novels

Chair: Cynthia Patterson, University of South Florida

“‘Without Mercy’: Revising the Historical Record in Elizabeth Oakes Smith’s Indian Novels,” Tracey Daniels-Lerberg, University of Utah

“Contesting the Uncontested: Revisions and Race in Oakes Smith’s The Bald Eagle,” Timothy Scherman, Northeastern Illinois University

“Writing for Revenge: Two Tales, Twenty Years, and a Lifetime of Rage,” Rebecca Jaroff, Ursinus College

ALA, 2016—San Francisco, CA

New Scenes in the Emergence of Elizabeth Oakes Smith

Chair: Tracey-Lynn Clough, UT-Arlington

“Recovering the African Female Subject of Oakes Smith’s earliest published fiction,” Abigail HarrisCulver, Independent Scholar

“When Gothic Rears its Ugly Head, or Unsettling Sentimentalism in 19th-Century Women’s Poetry,” Rebecca Jaroff, Ursinus College

“Uh, Captain?—What Captain?” Recovering the Publishing Context of Oakes Smith’s The Western Captive,” Timothy H. Scherman, Northeastern Illinois University

SSAWW, 2015 PHiLADELPHIA, PA

Rejoining the Conversation: Oakes Smith’s The Western Captive

Chair and Organizer: Timothy Scherman, Northeastern Illinois University

Rebecca Jaroff, Ursinus College, “Rejecting ʻWhiteness’ in Elizabeth Oakes Smith’s The Western Captive; or the Times of Tecumseh”

Irene S. DiMaio, Louisiana State University, “Friedrich Gerstäcker’s Western Captive: Mediation of America through Translation”

Tracey-Lynn Clough, UT-Arlington, “Captive to Kin: Accounts of Adoption in Indian Captivity Narratives

SSAWW, 2006 PHiLADELPHIA, PA

Elizabeth Oakes Smith: A Bi-Centennial Re-Introduction

Chair: Timothy H. Scherman, Northeastern Illinois University,

Angela Ray, Northwestern University, “The Lyceum Lectures of Elizabeth Oakes Smith”

Rebecca Jaroff, Ursinus College, “ ‘My Lips Grow Mute’: Voicing Rebellion in Elizabeth Oakes Smith’s Democracy in Old New York.

Holly Kent, Lehigh University, “ ‘The Daughter of a New Era’: Antebellum Feminist Discourse in Elizabeth Oakes Smith’s Bertha and Lily”

Timothy H. Scherman, Northeastern Illinois University, “’Onward’: Paths of Inquiry for the Future of Oakes-Smith Studies”