Folksinger, scholar, and creative writer Dianne Dugaw, professor of English and Folklore at the University of Oregon, will give the keynote address at the Spring Book Symposium, "Living Texts" Feb. 23.
The symposium begins at 9:30 a.m. with UGA faculty participating in a roundtable discussion on "Making Archival Material Come Alive in the Classroom."
At 11 a.m., Dugaw, the author of books and articles on early modern and 18th-century literature and culture, especially exploring gender and sexuality in folksongs, literature, and history, will speak on "Fighting and Sailing Women in Anglo-American Prints, Songs, and History (1600--present)."
A workshop with participants examining and discussing rare books will take place at 2 p.m. following a lunch break.
All events take place in Room 277 of the Russell Special Collections Libraries.
Dugaw's creative stories appear in such magazines as Blueline, Soundings, Slippery Elm, and Mount Hope. Her five-volume study and edition, Memoirs of Scandalous Women (2011), makes available life-stories of memorable 18th-century women--two outspoken courtesans and four cross-dressing soldiers.
Recent discussions of balladry appear in The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics (2012) and in “Heroines Gritty and Tender, Printed and Oral, Late-Breaking and Traditional,” a chapter in Ballads and Broadsides in Britain, 1500–1800 (2012) that revisits the topic of her first book, Warrior Women and Popular Balladry, 1650–1850 (1996).
Her CD recording, Dangerous Examples—Fighting & Sailing Women in Song (2001), gives a sampling of songs about warrior women from the Elizabethan era to the modern age.
Her ranch childhood in a musical and religious family informs both her interest in literature and traditional songs about women heroes and her memoir How Do the Horses Know? Growing Up Cowgirl. She is currently writing about her youthful years as a Catholic nun.