The Post-Now in African Literature: MMLA CFP, Minneapolis, MN

November 17-20, 2022

MMLA 2022 challenges scholars to ponder how modern languages and literatures work in these changing times, answering the questions: “How can we practice, both in our classrooms and in our research, socially relevant dialogues, informed by reflexive practices that promote community, rather than unilateral actions of one individual for the benefit of that individual alone? How do we move back toward developing communities that embrace difference, recognizing and stressing the importance of diversity across a wide spectrum, including gender, race, class, and ideology? How do we minimize our own political and personal biases and critically interrogate our own race, class, and gender privileges?” With reference to African Literature, how do writers from the continent report POST-NOW events that are specific to Africa in their fiction? 

The African Literature Permanent Section calls for papers attempting to answer these questions, using texts written by and about Africa/Africans to explore/examine/suggest/critique ways of adapting to the new society engendered after the reality of Covid-19 and the passion of Me-Too activists in parts of the continent. Is there a NOW that is mostly particular/specific/unique to Africa and Africans? Or, is the NOW a universal phenomenon? If so, how do African writers compare to their counterparts in depicting the angst in their communities?

Submit abstracts to: Olabisi Gwamna at titilopes41@gmail.com by May 10th, 2022.

MMLA’s permanent African American Literature section invites papers that examine the way black writers use black aesthetics in their work(s) to promote a “cultural ensemble” as Fred Moten notes.

With the 2022 MMLA theme of “Post-Now,” this section is concerned with how black writers use aesthetics to shape and/or reshape the resistance that blackness brings. American Blackness, of course, begins through the resistance of the object and the irruption or interruption of personhood and subjectivity. Even through, or perhaps because of, this resistance, blackness maintains a collective being. As such, I invite works that are concerned with how black writers use: music, art, violence, movement, language, communication, sex, etc. to maintain a black collectivity. This panel invites abstracts, of no more than 250 words, for presentations on African American literature at the Midwest Modern Language Association conference. Please submit your abstracts and CV to idale@nd.edu by May 10th, 2022.

The MMLA’s permanent session on American Literature pre-1870 seeks papers that engage with the conference theme, “Post-Now,” in a pre- and post-Revolutionary context. The moment of the Revolution was simultaneously a moment of explosive ideological change and continued oppression for millions of marginalized individuals in the colonies and subsequent United States. How do authors, artists, politicians, intellectuals, and writers of any background confront this division, and how are they able to propose a future for the new nation that recognizes continued tyranny in its social and political structures? Interdisciplinary and multinational perspectives welcome.

Please submit an approximately 250-word abstract and a brief CV to Sarah Dennis, dennissarahe@sau.edu , by May 10th.

The MMLA’s permanent section on American Literature After 1870 invites papers which, building on the conference theme, examine the topic of “post-book” American literature. In an 1868 essay, John William De Forest first used the term “The Great American Novel,” which has had an outsized impact on the American literary imagination ever since. This panel asks how the term applies in an age of sophisticated narratives that often live outside of the printed page, or in transmedia combinations with the printed page. While acknowledging the continuing importance of print texts both old and new, our panel seeks papers that examine the changes to literary analysis, objects, and pedagogy associated with a contemporary “post book” orientation.

For consideration, please send an abstract of no more than 250 words and a brief bio to najung@wisc.edu by May 10, 2022.

Whose Narratives Matter? Discussing Narratives on Race

The past two years have involved the United States still reckoning with its racist past and legacy. On one side, there are writers like Nikole Hannah-Jones, whose 1619 Project reexamines slavery’s legacy in the United and challenges traditional ways of narratives United States’ history. On another side, there are publications like the 1776 Project, which emphasizes a “patriotic education” while erasing voices that challenge systemic racism. These narratives, along with challenges to critical race theory and laws meant to eliminate discussions of race in the classroom, reveal the continuing challenges of creating inclusive spaces within our classrooms and research.

This section encourages submissions that address the following questions: How do we discuss race in this time? How can we practice inclusion under the threat of laws attempting to silence discussions of race? What strategies should we highlight to create meaningful inclusion in both our teaching and research?

Publish submit workshop, panel, or individual paper abstracts to Dr. Cedric Burrows (cedric.burrows@marquette.edu) by May 10th, 2022.  

!THIS CFP IS NO LONGER ACCEPTING SUBMISSIONS!

!THIS CFP IS NO LONGER ACCEPTING SUBMISSIONS!

MMLA Convention: Central American Permanent Section Call for Papers

The Central American Literature permanent section of the Midwest Modern Language Association seeks proposals for the upcoming MMLA Convention in Minneapolis, MN (Nov 17-20, 2022). This section welcomes proposals that analyze and interpret literature, audiovisual productions, and other cultural manifestations from Central America, with diverse methodologies and perspectives, with any national or transnational focus within the region, and those with a transcontinental or transoceanic connection. Thematic areas of analysis can include, and are not limited to, the 2022 MMLA theme: “Post-Now,” as well as any cultural, economic, social, and political aspect reflected in the artistic, cultural, and literary productions of the seven Central American nations: Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama.

Please, submit a 250-word abstract (include title) in Spanish or English, and a brief bio-bibliography or CV (include name, institutional affiliation, and e-mail) to David Rozotto at drozotto@uwaterloo.ca by May 10th, 2022.

The Comparative Literature section of the MMLA invites proposals for papers that engage with any aspect of this year's conference theme, "Post-Now." Building on the conference CFP's proposal to discuss the role of humanities in imagining a different future, this section asks these corollary questions: What is the role of comparative literature in these changing times? How can comparative perspectives and critical theory confront the most critical challenges in the 21st century? How should we imagine our roles as teachers and scholars of comparative literature when national and ethical boundaries are being deconstructed and reconstructed?

Please submit abstracts to Fontaine Lien at fontaine.lien@valpo.edu or fontaine.lien@gmail.com by May 10th, 2022.

“Post-Now: Storytelling, Craft, and Narratives for the Present and Future”

The Creative Writing: Prose permanent section of the Midwest Modern Language Association seeks proposals for readings or creative presentations that engage with this year’s conference theme of “Post-Now.” We are especially interested in readings of fiction and creative nonfiction that envision potential futures for the individual, the community, and the world. We seek future-oriented narratives that position their characters in relation to our present-day ecological, political, and cultural demands. This panel also seeks writers working in any genre or mode of prose writing, be it science fiction/fantasy, fabulism, realism, and so on. In doing so, we aim to establish dialogue across narrative traditions and invoke the question of what the “post-now” entails for the art and craft of storytelling. In addition to creative works, this panel invites writers to reflect on how their creative work engages with the MMLA conference theme and advocates for the ethic of responsibility, compassion, empathy, and/or civic engagement.

Moreover, we invite authors to speak on the role of fiction writing, creative nonfiction, immersion journalism, and other prose forms as tools for conceptualizing the “Post-Now.” How can prose writing mediate the past and present, reckon with our contemporary challenges, and navigate our progress into the future?

To submit your work for consideration, please submit an abstract of 200-300 words and a brief biography to Patrick Henry at patrick.henry@und.edu by May 10th, 2022. Proposals for readings of creative work should include a brief excerpt of 2 to 3 pages from the work. Please include your name, email, institutional affiliation (if applicable), and presentation title in the

In addressing the MMLA conference theme, “Post-Now,” the permanent section on “English Literature Before 1800” welcomes papers exploring any moments in pre-1800 literary scenes and contexts that relates our cultural moment. Topics may include, but are by no means limited to, representation, identity categories (race, class, gender, age, sexuality, disability, etc.), technologies, political movements, audience responses, and any other critical issues from any period and genre. Reflections on pedagogy and classroom practices that address the “Post-Now” theme are welcome.  

Please send abstracts (250 words) and a brief bio to June Oh at ohjune@msu.edu by May 10th, 2022. Please include your name, institutional affiliation, e-mail address, and paper title in your abstract. 

“Human and Non-Human Animals in 19^th century English Literature.”

According to John Berger in his famous essay, “Why Look at Animals?” (1977), there was a fundamental shift in the ways in which Europeans imagined and interacted with non-human animals (domesticated and wild) in the 19^th century. The nature of this shift, Berger argues, was a symptomatic consequence of the social, cultural, and demographic transformations brought about by industrialization, urbanization, and capitalism. 

Without necessarily engaging with Berger’s argument, this session will consider the representation and interactions of Human, Non-Human Animals in 19^th century English Literature. What does the literature of the period reveal about the relationships between humans and non- human animals? How and why were animals represented and what might these representations signify?

Please send a brief abstract (250 words), bio, and C.V. to Kevin Swafford at swafford@fsmail.bradley.edu. Deadline: May 10, 2022

CFP: Film II Permanent Section

Panel title: “Post-Now” Screen Adaptation

The Film II permanent section panel seeks papers that examine screen adaptation in the moment of variously theorized “post-nows”: post-literature, post-cinema, and/or post-television. Proposals may be on any topic related to screens and adaptation, including papers that:

• Analyze adaptations of literary works on film, television, and streaming screens.
• Theorize the relation of literature to film, television, and streaming screens.
• Examine screen adaptations in cultural contexts, including those of race, gender, sexuality, and social class.
• Situate screen adaptations by means of commercial, industrial, sociological, and/or archival studies.
• Focus on any of the following subjects: literary aesthetics and/or form on screen; representation of film, television, and screens in literature; cinematic television, etc.

For consideration, please send a CV and 250-word abstract with a proposed paper title to jhayes@semo.edu by May 10, 2022.

French I: Knowledge and Discovery in the Ancien Regime

The Ancien Régime represented a period of great transition in what would ultimately become the French national consciousness. While the vestiges of the Middle Ages still permeated certain aspects of the sociopolitical and economic order, the birth of a new, modern society was beginning to manifest in a myriad of ways. If this was certainty lived through the changing nature of the sociopolitical and economic system as well as paradigm shifts in scientific and philosophical understanding, this was also seen in more intimate and domestic spheres of social life – I’m thinking specifically of transformative and immersive reading practices, the gradual evolution of socially constructed gender roles, etc.

Call for Papers

French II Panel – MMLA Conference 2022

            In keeping with the conference theme of Post-Now, we welcome papers on any aspect of post-Revolutionary French or Francophone literature or culture that question our ethical responsibilities to our profession, our pedagogy, our research, our democracy, and ourselves, or that discuss the role of humanities post-now in an emphatic call for immediate changes to a fundamentally different future. We encourage submissions that advance criticism, research, and teaching to assess the important role our field will have after repositioning itself in this post-pandemic, post-truth landscape to reaffirm its relevance and importance to shape the future. Submissions on the following questions are encouraged: the role of the Humanities in these changing times; how to practice socially relevant dialogues in our classrooms and research; how to develop communities that embrace difference and stress the importance of diversity; how to minimize our own political and personal biases and critically interrogate our own race, class, and gender privileges; whether there is a need for rupture that requires new strategies to adapt to the “now” that are facing, or just the need to adapt strategies that already exist.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to the following:

-Feminisms and transfeminisms

-Literature and the environment

-Pop culture and visual arts

-Queer identities

-Cultural and literary studies

-Environmental and cultural sustainability

-Indigenous cultures

-Disability studies

-Postcolonial studies

-Race, gender, and subalternity

-Religious discourses

-Nationalisms

-Transatlantic Studies: Latin America/Europe/Africa

-Travel writing and networks

-Women studies

-Interdisciplinary work and the humanities

-Language communities

-Cultures of diaspora

-Minority cultures

-Ecocritical approaches to literature and cultural studies

-Transcultural identities

-Food studies

-Art, music, and painting

Please submit an abstract of approximately 250 words to Tanya Mushinsky at tanyamushinsky08@gmail.com by May 10, 2022.

!THIS CFP IS NO LONGER ACCEPTING SUBMISSIONS!

Session: Francophone Studies

Topic: Post Now
 
We welcome papers that explore Francophone Studies in light of the MMLA 2022 conference theme Post Now. Proposals dealing specifically with the conference theme will be given preferential consideration.

Participants are welcome to propose papers either in French or in English.
 
Please send a 250-word abstract to Benjamin Sparks at bjsparks@memphis.edu. Abstracts received by May 10th, 2022. will be ensured full consideration.
 

The International Harold Pinter Society

MMLA CFP 2022

“Art and Politics: Pinter and the Nobel”  

The 2022 MMLA convention theme, “Post-Now,” invites us to reconsider Harold Pinter’s Nobel speech, “Art, Truth and Politics.” In the address, Pinter reinforces his assessment that a “thing is not necessarily either true or false; it can be both true and false,” but clearly connects such an observation to the “exploration of reality through art.” In contrast to the artist, the citizen must distinguish between what is true and what is false. Failing to do this, the citizen risks supporting or participating in authoritarianism. While the dichotomy that Pinter constructs appears obvious enough, we invite papers that discuss, complicate, or expand how Pinter describes the distinction between the aesthetic and the political, and/or whether or not his reflections bear on the so-called post-truth era. Proposals may examine how Pinter’s description of aesthetic and political truth reflect or disrupt discussions of his so-called political plays and the way that language functions within them. Papers may also examine Pinter’s political legacy and its contemporary importance. Please submit a 250 word abstract, 2 page CV, and brief biographical statement to Matthew Roberts (mjrii@illinois.edu) by May 10th.

2022 Midwest Modern Language Association Conference

“Post Ban” 

The late Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison’s asserted that a “black presence” lies behind all  canonical American literature. Morrison’s famous reinsertion of the invisible, the silenced, the marginalized, which framed her short book of lectures, Playing in the Dark, was immensely influenced by critical race theory concepts and served as her direct a growing trend at the time to ban or repress ideas, books, points of view not shared by the dominant conservative, white ruling class.

What do literary scholars do after a ban or a threat of a ban on books and theory? This session is about resisting political repression by reading, teaching, and writing about banned books, ideas, or theoretical frameworks. Specifically, we invite scholars who are working on scholarship on critical race theory in its literary applications.

In January of this year, a Tennessee school board banned Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel Maus. Books like Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Toni Morrison’s Beloved and The Bluest Eye, Angie Walker’s The Hate U Give, and Elizabeth Acevedo’s The Poet X (to name just a handful), along with numerous titles that sympathetically and realistically depict the experiences of LGBTQ individuals or communities, have been banned or threatened with bans in various parts of the country.

A wave of laws across the U.S. that aim to ban the teaching of critical race theory has sought to silence discourse on white supremacy. Those laws would force many of us who teach the incisive and crucial scholarship of writers such as Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, David Omotoso Stovall, Lisa Lowe, Shana Redmond, Roderick Ferguson, Elizabeth Hinton, Michelle Alexander, Scott Kurashige, Angela Davis, Richard Delgado, E. San Juan, Jr., Victor Villanueva, Kimberle Crenshaw, Moon Kie-Jung, Michael Omi, Howard Winant, Tiya Miles, Robert Warrior, and many others who understand the U.S. through its racist and settler colonial structures and culture. While critical race theory originated in legal theory and is centered firmly in social research, its tenets and theories can be applied to interdisciplinary approaches to literary criticism. 

The purpose of this CFP is to center a critical approach racist structures and white supremacy in the work of literary criticism and the study of U.S. literature by adapting the four main principles of CRT:

1. Challenge the dominant ideology and "the master narrative."
2. Commitment to social justice understood as emergent through multiple intersecting sites of oppression and resistance.
3. Centrality of experiential knowledge: The knowledge of people of color in the fight against hegemonic forces.
4. Trans- and/or Inter- disciplinary perspectives.

How can we develop critical literary criticism that centers the marginalized, racialized presences in literatures of the U.S.? How can we place those works into conversation with today’s struggle for to make #BlackLivesMatter, to expose the xenophobia behind waves attacks on Asian-descended people, to resist and halt mass deportations and mass incarceration? How can we rearticulate CRT with a decolonial approach to white settler colonialism? Our work in this vein,” post ban,” becomes even more intensely political. It challenges not only white supremacy’s neoliberal appearances–its normalized and naturalized forms, processes, and governances–but it also resists the fascist threat of criminalization and other violence if adherence to its power is not consented to.

Abstracts due May 10th, 2022. Please send to Joel Wendland-Liu wendlajo@gvsu.edu

Luso-Brazilian Studies Permanent Session

MMLA 2022; abstracts due by May 10th, 2022. to either of the co-chairs via email

Co-Chairs: Isabela Fraga (fraga@uchicago.edu) and Juan Suárez Ontaneda (suarezontanedaj@xavier.edu)

This panel seeks submissions from scholars working with or about the idea of racial democracy, its contenders, and its endurance in Luso-Brazilian social thought, literature, media, and other cultural objects. Papers can either focus on the genealogy of the idea of “racial democracy,” how Indigenous peoples and Afro-Brazilians have contended with or appropriated this concept, and on ways in which the idea of racial democracy still lingers in Luso-Brazilian public discourse. We are particularly interested in the works of scholars who are doing comparative work across the region, who are thinking about “racial harmony” as a contested concept across the Americas, and about current assessments of Lusotropicalism.

The Prescience of Margaret Atwood’s Works: Lessons from the Past to Illuminate the Post-Now

As we find notes of Atwood’s works coming to fruition in news stories and politics, it is tempting to call her an oracle. However, Atwood’s brand of speculative fiction lends itself to showing up quite frequently (as she famously said about The Handmaid’s Tale, “Nothing went into it that had not happened in real life somewhere at some time” -- and history does repeat). From medical breakthroughs, to environmental tragedies, to questions about women’s reproductive freedoms, we see countless examples from Atwood’s works in our current post-now, post-Trump, current/post-pandemic world, but this call seeks to go deeper than merely pointing them out, and asks us to explore some potential questions:

• What lessons can we take from Atwood’s works and/or characters to navigate this post-now world? (Consider such topics as our online lives, political infighting, racism, threat of war, new/reignited gender and sex battles, climate change, etc.)

• How can we approach teaching Atwood’s works in new ways that advance criticism and promote community in this post-now landscape?

• Through the lens of Atwood’s works, what roles do literature and the study thereof -- or the humanities more broadly -- play in creating a more just post-now world?

While Atwood’s works of speculative fiction (The Handmaid’s Tale, The Testaments, The MaddAddam Trilogy, The Heart Goes Last) lend themselves handily to this topic, we also encourage papers that explore Atwood’s other works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, or combinations of two or more of Atwood’s works.

Submit a 250-word abstract and brief bio to panel chair Denise Du Vernay, dduvernay@luc.edu, by May 10, 2022.

CALL FOR PAPERS
2022 MMLA Conference’s MVSA-Affiliated Panel

Minneapolis, Minnesota

November 17-20, 2022

“Post-Then” in Victorian Culture

In keeping with the MMLA conference theme, “Post-Now,” the Midwest Victorian Studies Association panel welcomes proposals that explore myriad examples of “Post-Then” moments in 19^th century Britain that mirror our 21^st-century “Post-Now” movements.

Victorian England was filled with the following “Post-Then” indicators:

• Socially relevant dialogues
• Reflexive practices promoting communities
• Embracing, negotiating, and navigating differences
• Recognizing and stressing diversities across wide spectrums
• Interrogating political and personal biases and privileges
• Ruptures, reconciliations, and reactions to previous historical and cultural shifts, thinkers, writers, and texts

Possible venues through which to explore the above aspects of “Post-Then” Victorian culture include but are not limited to:

• Arts
• Sciences
• Religions
• Travel
• Empire
• Economics
• Industrialization

We welcome papers about diverse genres and media and particularly encourage proposals with significant interdisciplinary/cross-disciplinary engagement, highlighting varied aspects of nineteenth-century British history, literature, and culture.

The deadline for proposals is May 10, 2022.

Please submit a 250-word abstract and a 1-page vita (as Microsoft Word documents) for consideration to Gretchen M. Frank at mvsaatmmla@gmail.com.

For more information about the MMLA Conference, visit https://www.luc.edu/mmla/convention/.

Rupture and Rebuild: Modernism in “Times Like These.”

Modernism came into full bloom in circumstances not unlike our own: in the midst of pandemics, wars and global conflicts, unpredictable dictators, extraordinary poverty, etc. Many of these artists, in response to such inflection points, channeled these crises and moments of rupture into their writing, to reflect the ways the world seemed to be in free fall. While some used art to diagnose the urgent problems facing the world, others sought to craft art that could be potentially redemptive; they saw artistic productions as the necessary foundations for rebuilding and revitalizing cultures and countries that had fallen into disrepair.

For the Modernists, art was a method of deconstructing existing frameworks with words and using the pieces to rebuild something new on the old foundations. How can we see the work of these authors as useful as we face our own “unprecedented times”? How have we built on modernists’ work? What tools, if any, did the modernists leave for us in the literary archives, and what strategies might we implement by placing their tools in our hands? What are we creating now that will reflect our legacy post-now?

Topics to engage might include but are not limited to:

• Political, physical, and intellectual infrastructure
• Migration (mass- or individual) and refuge
• War, politics, and [inter]national conflict
• Collective wellbeing in the midst of a pandemic
• Access to changemaking tools, who has access, effectiveness of these tools
• Methods of deconstructing and rupturing
• Methods of rebuilding from the rubble
• Small-scale, personal deconstruction and/or reconstruction in literature
• The role of the arts in global action
• Education’s role in making change and altering the status quo
• Applying modernist strategies to a more interconnected world
• Adapting modernist methods of rupture and construction
• Issues of personal health and safety in times of national unease
• Anticipating disaster and the precipice of tragedy
• Rebellion, resistance, and modernist coup
• And related topics

Please direct your proposal and a short professional bio to both Sam Lepak and Anthony Shoplik at slepak@luc.edu and ashoplik@luc.edu by May 10th, 2022. Proposals should include your name, affiliation (if applicable), an abstract of 250 words detailing your submission, as well as a brief bio. Also, please specify any A/V needs.

Section Chair: Wren Romero, Loyola University Chicago, lcraig3@luc.edu

Section Secretary: Sam Lepak, Loyola University Chicago, slepak@luc.edu

Native American Literature

Post-Now in Native American Literature

The Permanent Section on Native American Literature seeks proposals for papers addressing the conference theme of the post-now applied to Native American literatures. Papers addressing socially-relevant pedagogical approaches to contemporary Native American texts are encouraged. Topics may include complications of applying post-colonial theory or post-trauma theories to the study of Native American literatures.

Please send an abstract of 200-300 words by May 10, 2022 to Kate Beutel, at kbeutel@lourdes.edu.

!THIS CFP IS NO LONGER ACCEPTING SUBMISSIONS!

This CFP is no longer accepting submissions.

!THIS CFP IS NO LONGER ACCEPTING SUBMISSIONS!

"Putting Our Faith in Institutions": MMLA Convention

Cincinnati, OH. November 2-5, 2023

Science and Literature: Posthumanism and the Post-Apocalyptic

The recognition of anthropogenic climate change and the form and figure of apocalypse have intertwined in the U.S. consciousness for at least as far back as George Perkins Marsh’s 1864 contention in Man and Nature that “earth is fast becoming an unfit home for its noblest inhabitant.” For at least so far back, writers and philosophers have contributed to the cultural imagination of humanity’s future: adaptation or extinction. This panel invites contributions which look beyond the “now” of what Marsh calls “climatic excess” to the bodies, minds, and forms of being that emerge in literature that registers environmental collapse or transformation. What human (or posthuman) subjectivities (or intersubjectivities) populate our imaginary future? What other ends are we able to imagine by imagining the end of the world—or simply of human life on it? Such discussions may take up, for instance,

• The alien body in science fiction
• Biocultural or bioregional perspectives
• The climate crisis in literature and film
• Ecocriticism and/or eco-feminism
• Geographical collaborations
• Metamorphoses (cockroach and otherwise)
• Post-apocalyptic narratives
• Radiation and radioactivity in popular culture
• Techno-utopian solutions
• Zombies

Papers on a variety of literary traditions and literary theory are invited. Please submit an abstract or proposal not exceeding 300 words to andy.harper@slu.edu by 15 April 2022.

Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature

MMLA 2022

Minneapolis, Minnesota

Title: “‘Post-Now’: Locating the Humanities and/or the American Dream in Midwestern Literature.”

Description & Requirements: Have Midwestern writers helped to foster literacy and the humanities within their texts? Are these texts traditional or experimental? Does that matter? Do these texts interrogate the American Dream, foster it, or both? In which Midwestern texts are characters (or narrators) readers, dreamers, and/or artists and how does that work for them and for us?

Submission Requirements: 250 word abstract and short CV.

Contact Person Information: Dr. Marilyn Judith Atlas, Professor, Ohio University, atlas@ohio.edu

Submission Deadline: May 10, 2022

“Post-Now: Futures of the Short Story, the Short Story of the Future”

Recent discussions and debates in literary and creative writing studies have invited fiction writers, scholars, and readers alike to re-evaluate the form and the function of the short story. The rise and prominence of online literary magazines and e-texts have forced writers to adapt to lower word counts and the challenges of on-screen reading: writers have responded with fragmented and braided narratives that eschew the “long-read” short story published in venues like The New Yorker or Paris Review. Handheld gaming on consoles like Nintendo’s 3DS and Switch systems have brought genres like the visual novel to the West—transforming short-form narratives into portable and interactive hybrid works of literature.

These technological shifts are only two recent changes to how we create and engage with short stories. Current political events have also pushed the form to adapt. The Western tradition of the realist short story is proving insufficient to depict the present age of disinformation, rampant conspiracy theories, and authoritarian ideologies in the United States and elsewhere. The result is a surge of short fiction that leverages the conventions of genre fiction—from fabulism, to horror, to surrealism, to fanfiction, and beyond—to react to post-truth modernity. Texts like Matthew Salesses’s Craft in the Real World (Catapult, 2021) and Felicia Rose Chavez’s The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop (Haymarket, 2021) bring the same scrutiny to creative writing pedagogy and the instruction of the writer’s craft: both of these texts assert that the so-called rules of form, style, and technique are inseparable from social contexts, culturally coded conventions, and institutional expectations. Salesses, Chavez, and others contend that, in order to write the stories of the future and prepare the writers of the future, we must reevaluate and interrogate our conventions, our practices, and the many histories of the short story with the aim of opening this familiar form to future innovations.

The Short Story Permanent Section of the MMLA invites paper proposals on these questions: what are the futures of the short story, and what might the short story of the future look like? We invite papers that consider these questions in any of the contexts listed above, or in the contexts of the MMLA’s “Post-Now” CFP for the 2022 conference.

Please send an abstract of 200-300 words to Patrick Henry (patrick.henry@und.edu) by May 10th, 2022. 

MMLA 2023 – Spanish Cultural Studies Permanent Section CFP

Contact: Dr. Kathy Korcheck (korcheckk@central.edu)

The Spanish Cultural Studies permanent section of the Midwest Modern Language Association seeks proposals for the upcoming MMLA conference in Cincinnati (November 2-5, 2023). Proposals related to any aspect of Spanish Cultural Studies are welcome, but we encourage submissions that explore the conference theme of "Going Public: What the MMLA Owes Democracy." Please submit a 250-word abstract and a brief bio to Dr. Kathy Korcheck at korcheckk@central.edu by 15 April 2023. Presentations may be in Spanish or English.

The Spanish I (Peninsular Literature before 1700) permanent section of the Midwest Modern Language Association seeks proposals for the upcoming MMLA conference in Cincinnati (November 2-5, 2023). Though proposals on any topic related to Medieval and Early Modern Spanish Literature are welcome, we also seek proposals that specifically engage with the MMLA conference theme of “Going Public: What the MMLA Owes Democracy.” Please submit a 250-word abstract and a brief bio (or brief CV) to John Giblin at jgiblin@ksu.edu by April 15th, 2023. Papers may be in Spanish or English. 

Call for Papers

2022 MMLA Conference - "Post-now"

 Permanent Section: Spanish III: Latin American Literature

We welcome proposals that explore Latin American Literature and Culture and create space for dialogue across disciplines and genres in the context of this year’s conference theme “Post-now”. Proposals exploring issues related to the role of humanities post-now in the Latin American context from any time-period will be given preferential consideration. Papers on any aspect of this topic or other topics are welcome, including but not limited to the following themes:

• Latin American feminisms and transfeminisms
• Latin American Literature and the environment
• Pop culture and visual arts in the Latin American context
• Queer identities in Latin America
• Latin American cultural and literary studies
• Environmental and cultural sustainability
• Indigenous cultures in Latin America
• Latin American issues on disability
• Postcolonial studies
• Race, gender and subalternity
• Religious discourses and consumption
• Latin American nationalisms and consumption
• Transatlantic Studies: Latin America/ Europe/Africa
• Travel writing and networks of collectivity
• Women in Latin American literature
• Minority cultures in Latin America
• Ecocritical approaches to consumption
• Transcultural identities in Latin America
• Food studies in the Latin American context

Please send proposals of 250 words by May 8, 2022 to michelle.medeiros@marquette.edu. Participants are welcome to propose papers either in Spanish, Portuguese, or in English. 

Call for Papers

Midwest Modern Language Association

November 17-20, 2022

Minneapolis, Minnesota

“Post-Now” Perspectives on French, German, and Spanish-Language Cultural Production Since 1900

Hosted by Studies in Twentieth and Twenty-first Century Literature​

This panel invites contributions that explore the conference theme “post-now” in literary texts or media produced in Spanish, German, or French since 1900. Comparative and interdisciplinary papers are also encouraged.

Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

• Race, gender, and subalternity
• Literature and the environment
• Disability studies
• Postcolonial studies
• Cultures of diaspora
• Food studies
• Pop culture and visual arts
• Translation studies

Panelists will be encouraged to submit manuscripts to be considered for publication in the online, open-access, peer-reviewed journal Studies in Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Literature.

Please send proposals (250 words) and a brief biography (100 words) to Dr. Ljudmila Bilkic, bilkic@ku.edu  by May 10, 2022.

Chères/Chers Collègues,

I am pleased to announce the Call for Papers for WIF at the 2023 MMLA Convention (to be held in person November 2-5 in Cincinnati, OH). We welcome proposals that relate the study of French and Francophone women authors, the study of women's place in French and Francophone cultures or literatures, and feminist literary criticism to this year's theme: "Going Public: What the MMLA Owes Democracy."

"Adhering to the MMLA's mission of disseminating and advancing the creation and exchange of knowledge, discovery, and learning in modern languages and literatures, we encourage submissions that directly engage with our profession's responsibility to combat mistruth and disinformation while supporting diverse interpretations of the shared truths that undergird functional democratic institutions." Please send a 250-word abstract in French or English along with your academic affiliation, brief bio, and A/V requirements to Jennifer Howell, Illinois State University, jthowel@ilstu.edu by April 15, 2023.

Proposals for complete panels and/or roundtables are also welcome. Notifications will be sent by May 31, 2023. All presenters must be current members of both the Midwest Modern Language Association and Women in French by August 1, 2023 to participate.

Additional information can be found on the conference website: https://www.luc.edu/mmla/convention/ Please don't hesitate to contact me directly if you have any questions. We look forward to seeing you in Cincinnati!

Mapping Literary Shifts in Twenty-First Century Women’s Literature: A Response to the Future of the Past

Taking into account the presidential theme for MMLA, 2022-- “Post-Now” --, it is important to foreground what constitutes the “now” and what its discursive urgency means for this panel. While “now” can be ontologically considered as the transient nature of the present moment in time, which is relative in nature (Einstein 14), its association to time can also be extended to understand the persistence of circumstances and ideas as situated in the present age, or the contemporary times (Dubreuil 44). Laurent Dubreuil links literature to temporality, mentioning how “literature does not exist before but rather after itself: we reconstruct and designate it without exhausting its signification” (Dubreuil 45). Keeping her conceptualization of literature in mind, this panel interrogates and explores literary shifts in women’s literature within the twenty-first century. To be more specific, this session attempts to understand how the twentieth century women’s literature has influenced and reconstructed their meaning in the twenty-first century contemporary feminist endeavor. It seeks to understand how the “now”—twenty-first century women’s works—is shaped by the past, and how the present “now” can define the future. Some questions it aims to ask are: How can multiplicitous interpretations of a text act as tools for challenging essentialist assumptions about certain ethnic Others? How can the “now” can re/define the future of women’s literature? How has the current Covid-19 pandemic made space for nineteenth century texts, especially by Woolf and Austen, to be re-interpreted? How has the global pandemic changed pedagogy, and what are its affordance and challenges? What is the future of the earth? How will/has climate fiction respond(ed) to the current ongoing pandemic? How has social responsibility changed towards ecology within the past decade and how can social behavior be reimagined for the future? What and how is the role of ethics of care and empathy evolved during the pandemic? Given the protests against several social injustices happening around the globe, how can “collectivity” be worked as a signifier, signified, and an index of systemic injustice? What is the potential of Indigenous (feminist) struggles in literature and what role does agency, embodiment, and language play? What is the future of Gender and Sexuality Studies? What role does aesthetics play in experimental, multimodal storytelling and publishing? How is utopia or dystopia re/imagined in video games and other social interactive forms? 

We invite papers that interrogate the many ways in which women’s texts embrace, embody, reject, subvert, negotiate and/or interrogate ideas of literary shifts that has happened within the past two decades and how they shape the future. We seek to diversify and multiply the ways these ideas can be taken up, including but certainly not limited to:

• Graphic narrative and multiple marginalities
• Gender and Game Studies
• Indigeneity, cultural memory, and traditions
• Anthropocene, Plantationocene, and Environmental racism
• Relationality, empathy, affect, and ethics of care
• Femme fatale and Desiree narratives
• Interdisciplinary research and Digital Humanities
• Agency and Embodiment
• Diasporic sensibility and postcolonial trauma
• Climate fiction, solarpunk literature
• Afrofuturist, Amazofuturist, Indigenous futurist literature
• Motherhood during the pandemic
• Representation of solidarity, allyship, working conditions
• Ace and Aro studies
• Activism in physical and online space

Please send a 500-word abstract to Sayanti Mondal (smondal@ilstu.edu) and Edcel J. Cintron-Gonzalez (ejcintr@ilstu.edu) by May 10th. Please cc both the co-chairs in your email.

Writing Across the Curriculum (MMLA)

Deadline for submissions:

April 15, 2022

Full name/Name of organization:

Alejandra Ortega / Purdue University

Contact email:

Ortega22@purdue.edu

The Midwest Modern Language Association’s 2022 conference theme is “Post-Now.” The conference will take place November 17-20 in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

The Writing Across the Curriculum permanent session will explore this theme by exploring our ethical responsibilities as instructors of writing, our pedagogy, and our work with students as they seek to find their voice in composition classrooms. 

Topics might include, but are not limited to:

• Approaches and assignments that encourage socially relevant dialogues
• Collaborative pedagogy
• Disability studies approach to writing studies
• Methods for guiding students through arguments and counterarguments (this could include teaching students to interrogate their biases)
• Approaches to teaching productive engagement with sources
• Addressing political or social challenges through writing
• Building community within writing centers or between writing centers and classroom instruction
• Empathy and Praxis pedagogy

Please send 250-300 word proposals and a brief bio to Alejandra Ortega (ortega22@purdue.edu) by April 11, 2022.

[categories for upenn: interdisciplinary, pedagogy, theory, rhetoric and composition, English-education, cultural studies and historical approaches]

We welcome proposals that explore how representation is forged in connection with collective acts in contemporary film. How, for example, are cultures created by the gathering together of human subjects? What modes of collectivity, be they formal or informal, arise from culture, or have arisen historically? How have directors represented the salient political and social challenges of our time through notions of collective response and collaboration? How does this impact the aesthetic of the film? We seek proposals that wrestle with these (or related) transhistorical questions. Proposals that explore innovate pedagogical methods when teaching contemporary film or documentaries are welcomed. In this session, we also seek to explore how teaching across disciplines can lead to new dialogues or teaching methods/instruction. How does film pedagogy intersect with the work of colleagues in other disciplines? How does it take shape and come to fruition in the classroom?

Topics could include, but are not limited to:

• Close analysis of film
• Film theory
• Film criticism
• Film history
• Modes of film studies
• Methods of film production
• World film studies
• Collaborative pedagogy and team-teaching
• Collaborations in the classroom (i.e. group assignments, collective grading, etc.)
• Cultures of collectivity
• Collective communities in film
• Language, translation, bilingualism
• History and duality
• Indigenous cultures
• Religious discourses
• Feminisms
• Border studies
• African American studies
• Afro-Latinx studies
• Queer studies
• Performance studies
• Postcolonial studies
• Cultural studies

Please send proposals of 250 words maximum by May 10, 2022 to Co-Chairs Dr. José M. Medrano jmedrano@sbu,edu and Judit Palencia Gutierrez jpalenciagutierrez@fullerton.edu. Participants are welcome to propose papers either in English or Spanish.