Washington Irving Society Panels at ALA: Submissions Due Friday, January 23

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Wednesday, January 21, 2026

BY TRACY HOFFMAN

Washington Irving Society President

I am back to school and back to blogging, but on this Washington Irving Wednesday, I want to use this space to talk about our upcoming panels at the American Literature Association conference in Chicago. If you would like to present on Irving this May, please note our CFP, which I have pasted below for you. It is also on the ALA website and on the CFP section of the Washington Irving website.

The call is broad enough to allow for any current research on Irving. If you do not have research underway, the call also opens opportunities for those who could share about teaching one of Irving’s texts.

Please get those submissions to Sean Keck, our vice president, by 11:59 p.m. on Friday, and I look forward to seeing you in Chicago.

CFP: Washington Irving – Innovative Strategies for Teaching and Researching Washington Irving (ALA 2026)

The Washington Irving Society (washingtonirvingsociety.org) invites papers discussing innovative ways to teach and/or research Washington Irving and his texts, for the American Literature Association Conference in Chicago, May 20-23, 2026. We welcome papers offering new insight into “Rip Van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” and also encourage insightful studies into other Irving texts. Please send an abstract of approximately 250 words plus a brief bio to Dr. Sean Keck at skeck@radford.edu by January 23, 2026. For more information about the ALA Conference, please see americanliteratureassociation.org

Published in: on January 21, 2026 at 1:25 pm  Leave a Comment  
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Pedagogy on the Prairie: Preparing to Teach Irving’s Western Narratives

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Wednesday, October 22, 2025

BY TRACY HOFFMAN

Over the weekend, I attended the ALA Symposium in Santa Fe, and gave a paper, “A Tour of Pedagogy with Washington Irving,” on a Genre Pedagogy panel with colleagues from Baylor. We were pleased with how the panel went, and are considering next steps for the material.

After taking the road trip from Waco to Santa Fe, and back, stopping at the grave of Billy the Kid, I’m ready to get moving on Irving’s western narratives. Next week, my Washington Irving class begins reading A Tour on the Prairies (1835). We’re taking it slowly, doing a much closer reading of Irving, as this will be the one text we read from cover to cover.

And I literally mean cover to cover. Today, I managed to give all my students a hard copy of the book, in a variety of shapes and sizes. I’m especially thankful all my Amazon orders arrived on time, and in good shape. Students seemed pleased with the latest edition to their library collections, but we’ll see how the reading goes in the weeks ahead. We’ll be working through the readings as they finish up Literature Reviews/Annotated Bibliographies and Alternative Reality Game (ARG) projects, due before Thanksgiving.

In case you’re interested, here’s our breakdown for the reading of A Tour on the Prairies:

Monday, 10-27 Chapters 1-5
Wednesday, 10-29Chapters 6-10
Monday, 11-03Chapters 11-15
Wednesday, 11-05 Chapters 16-20
Monday, 11-10Chapters 21-25
Wednesday, 11-12Chapters 26-35

As we move through the material, I’ll be sure to share on Washington Irving Wednesdays what we noticed, uncovered, and discussed. If you have any tips on the text, please feel free to comment. I’ve taught the book many times, but it’s been awhile. I’m looking forward to fresh lesson plans and updated conversations about Irving’s trip to Oklahoma Territory.

Published in: on October 22, 2025 at 8:09 pm  Comments (1)  
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