October 31, 2014
Dear Colleague:
As some of you may know, our dear colleague and friend, Patricia Cline Cohen,
decided to retire at the end of the last academic year. Some of us—her former and
current students, and her colleagues both at UCSB and elsewhere—would like to
honor her many intellectual and professional contributions with a gathering of
scholars this spring.
This conference is tentatively entitled “Women, Gender, Sex: Social and Cultural
Histories of the Long Nineteenth Century—a conference in honor of Patricia Cline
Cohen,” and it has been scheduled for the weekend of May 1-3, 2015 in Santa
Barbara, at the campus where Pat has made her professional home for some 38
years. Many of you first encountered her here, as your undergraduate or graduate
instructor. Some of you knew her through her critical work in building the UCSB
program in Women’s Studies, now the Department of Feminist Studies. And some of
you know her primarily through her work in the archives or at professional
meetings, where she has always shown herself to be a skillful sleuth, ferreting out
data whether from church basements or Ancestry.com, to tell rich and transforming
stories rooted in careful research and—to use a favorite word of Pat’s—shrewd
assessments of the human character.
However you know Pat, we hope that you will join us here in Santa Barbara in a
conference that will use her work as a focal point from which to explore the vibrant
fields of Women’s/Feminist History, Gender Studies, and the many Histories of
Sexuality, and which will honor her many contributions to historical knowledge and
to the historical profession.
We invite you to celebrate with us, through a series of panels. We especially invite
presentations in the following areas:
 The Innovations and Inspirations in A Calculating People
 Revisiting The Murder of Helen Jewett
 Building Women’s Studies/Feminist Studies from the ground up
 Circles of Friendship and Learning: collegiality and leadership
 A Calculating Teacher—Patricia Cline Cohen as mentor, guide, friend
 “If Pat had not _____, I would never have _____.”
We welcome your proposals! If you would like to participate in the conference as a
speaker in a panel or a roundtable, please let us know by responding by no later
than November 20, with a title, short (1 p.) abstract, or description of your
proposed contribution, and a short vita to plane@history.ucsb.edu. All submissions
will be acknowledged by return email.
If you want to be added to the conference listserv, please send us your name, email,
snail mail address/phone, and your connection to Pat Cohen or to UCSB.
At the time of the conference, UCSB will still be in session. As with any meeting,
blocks of rooms at a local hotel will be set aside, and a modest fee will be required to
defray the costs of attendance not covered by campus or community contributions.
Speakers must be prepared to cover their own costs of travel but, to the extent that
we are able, we hope to be able to offer modest travel subventions for those who
appear on the program.
Many thanks!
Yours,
Ann Plane (UCSB)
plane@history.ucsb.edu
Megan Bowman (PhD 2013, Georgia State University)
meganpbowman@gmail.com
Please direct your questions, comments, and suggestions to:
Professor Ann Marie Plane
Department of History
Mail Code 9410
University of California, Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, CA 93106-9410
(805) 895-5820
Or by email: plane@history.ucsb.edu