Call for Papers

42nd Annual Convention
Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA)

April 7-10, 2011

New Brunswick, New Jersey

The 42nd Annual Convention will feature approximately 350 sessions, as well as dynamic speakers and cultural events. Interested participants may submit abstracts to more than one NeMLA session; however, panelists can only present one paper (panel or seminar). Convention participants may present a paper at a panel and also present at a creative session or participate in a roundtable.

Abstract Deadline: September 30, 2010

Please include with your abstract:

Name and Affiliation
Email address
A/V requirements (if any; $10 handling fee)

American

Cultural Studies and Film: “What a ‘Man’’s Gotta Do: (Re)Defining Duty in Post-Feminist Action Films”

German: “Cultural and Political Dislocation and Reorientation in United Germany”; “Rap Music’s Sophisticated Dialogues with Society”

LGBTQ: “Prove It On Me: Ambivalent Lesbian Representation in the Harlem Renaissance”; “(Re)Imagining Expatriates: Queer Transnationalisms in American Literature”

Pedagogy: “Problem Based Learning: Strategies, Struggles, and Successes”

Theory and Literary Criticism: “Uncovering the Tradition of Vitalism in 20th Century Literature”

Transnational Literatures: “Global Magical Realisms and Speculative Fiction”; “Globalization and the Americas: Challenging Categories of Literary Production”

Women’s and Gender Studies: “Disordered Narratives: Psychological Illness in Women’s Life Writing”; “The Loudest Voice: Jewish American Women’s Literature”; “Rethinking Second & Third Wave Feminisms”; “When Motherhood Studies Meets Other Disciplines”

20th Century Sentimentalism: This panel examines sentimentality in 20th century American literature. How do 20th century authors utilize 19th century modes of sentimentalism? How do 20th century understandings of gender, queerness, and class alter uses of sentimentality? Given the historical appropriation of sentimentalism by African-American male and female writers, papers that consider sentimentalism and race are also strongly encouraged. Please send name, academic affiliation, a brief biography, and a 250-500 word abstract to Jenn Williamson (jwilliamson@unc.edu).
Adoption in Contemporary Literature and Culture (Roundtable): This roundtable seeks papers that explore representations of adoption in contemporary literature and popular culture. How do current discussions and representations of adoption make this once secret institution such a public one? How do issues of race, class, and multiracial identity inform these representations? Please submit 250-500 word abstracts to Nicole L.B. Furlonge at nlfurlonge@gmail.com.
Affect and Periodization: Rethinking the Long 19th Century: This panel will investigate increasing interest in affect by examining the intersection of Early and post-Civil War American literature. The panel will consider how theorizing affect might replace, subvert, or change the boundaries of periodization by using the Civil War boundary dividing the “long nineteenth-century.” We seek papers that address these issues through readings of relevant literary or theoretical texts. E-mail proposals to Justin Rogers Cooper (justinrogerscooper@gmail.com) or Neil Meyer (nmeyer@gc.cuny.edu).
American Fiction Reflecting Global Ecological Concerns: This panel seeks papers that explore the salient connection between contemporary American fiction and the earth’s current environmental crisis. Submissions are invited that interrogate the immediacy of a fictional world that serves as a microcosm for our 21st century world with its global ecological concerns. Send 300-word abstracts to Dr. Linda Byrd Cook, Sam Houston State University, via e-mail: LindaCook@shsu.edu.
American Horror: Gothic Strategies in Ante-bellum Discourses: This panel will consider uses of Gothic strategies in critiques of civil abuses in ante-bellum America. We welcome papers that discover and analyze instances in which writers turn to Gothic tropes to fully delineate the horrors of public institutions, including slavery and mental asylums. Please send detailed proposals to Ruth Bienstock Anolik, ruth.anolik@villanova.edu.
American Literary Tourism: From visits to the grave of the fictional eighteenth-century Charlotte Temple, to the restoration of Salem’s House of the Seven Gables at the turn of the century, to competing twentieth-century Faulkner Festivals, literary tourism is ingrained in American culture. We invite submissions from scholars interested in any aspect of American literary tourism, from the creation and maintenance of sites and events, to interpretations and experiences of them, and beyond. Send 300-500 word proposals and brief bio/CV to Jennifer Harris (jharris@mta.ca).
Blowing Up America: Amiri Baraka’s Revolutionary Theatre: This panel seeks papers that investigate the role of revolution deriving from Amiri Baraka’s 1965 essay, “The Revolutionary Theatre,” emphasizing primarily Baraka’s political writing and his stage drama. Papers engaging Marxist theory are especially welcome, since Baraka has come to claim Marxism as significant in his philosophical development. Please submit 250-word abstracts to Dr. Donald Gagnon at GagnonD@wcsu.edu
Brooklyn Poetics: From the rough-and-tumble streets of Greenpoint to the refined brownstones of Brooklyn Heights, poets have lived in, looked across the river toward, complained about, and extolled the virtues of, Brooklyn. This panel will argue for the existence of a poetics of Brooklyn grounded in the area’s rich cultural heritage and the ordinary/extraordinary experiences of those people who live their lives on “the other side” of the Brooklyn Bridge. Send abstracts to Wendy Galgan, wgalgan@stfranciscollege.edu.
Chicas, Nǚhái, Batang babae: Girlhood in Contemporary Ethnic American Literature: This panel will examine representations of girlhood in Ethnic American literature (1980-present) intended for adolescent or adult audiences. Topics of the panel include, but are not limited to: parent-daughter relationships, sexual initiation and identity, girls and violence/abuse, girls and nation, sisterhood, girls and beauty, friends and enemies, religion, girls and work. Papers on Asian American, Latina, or Native American literature are especially welcome. Please submit 250-500 word abstracts to Christa Baiada at cbaiada@bmcc.cuny.edu.
The Cold War as an American Cultural Dominant, 1945-1955: This panel seeks papers that theorize the early years of the Cold War via cultural work produced between 1945-1955 and encourages discussions that examine the ways postwar American culture figures aspects of the Cold War. Here, American culture includes literature, film, music, and other forms of artistic expression, and aspects of the Cold War include domestic and international concerns. Please send 250-word abstracts to Michael Mayne, mayne@ufl.edu, with ‘NeMLA abstract’ in the subject line.
Crowd Forms in American Literature: From lynch mobs, angry strikers, and irrational consumers, collectives in American literature are often represented, in accordance with popular 19th-century views, as irrational, labile, and primitive. Recent theorists of collective subjectivities, however, have begun to question this disparaging view. This panel seeks to explore works by American authors that challenge the traditional, reactionary understanding of crowds, audiences, publics, and collectives. Send 300 word abstracts to Phillip Mahoney at pmahoney@temple.edu.
Discourse on Democratic Identity & Freedom: Douglass, Wright, Ellison, Baldwin: This panel invites papers which will address the possibility of change through African American discourse on democratic identity. How did Frederic Douglass, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin and Richard Wright embody the extent and knowledge of “principles of democracy and democratic identity” in their writing? Did their work(s)impact the evolution of novel forms of discourse on American democratic identity? Please submit 300-500 word abstracts to Nilgün Anadolu-Okur, nilgun.okur@gmail.com
The Early Black Atlantic: African Muslims and African Diasporic Narratives: This panel will examine early narratives by Diasporic Africans as part of the conception of the Black Atlantic. Papers will explore paradigms for reading eighteenth-century African Diasporic narratives, which challenge Western cultural, religious, and social values. Papers which employ African-centered theoretical frames are highly encouraged. Please send a 250-500 word abstract to Fran L. Lassiter (flassite@mc3.edu). Also include your name, academic affiliation, a brief biography, and contact information.
Family Formations in Contemporary Multiethnic American Literature: In contrast to the “traditional” nuclear family, contemporary multiethnic American authors have often depicted the family unit as destabilized, challenged, or redefined by conflicting demands of race, ethnicity, nation, capitalism, patriarchy, labor, slavery, etc. This panel invites papers that explore how the family unit and the individual roles of “father,” “mother,” and “child” are complicated by such factors; we will also consider how “alternative” and “extended” families are created in these works. Melissa Dennihy at mdennihy@gmail.com.
The Family in Contemporary Drama: This session will explore topics about the family in contemporary American drama. Papers could address role changes, change in form, challenges to nuclear family, parenting, children, generational conflict, dysfunction, modes of interaction, and more. This panel will assess the health of the family by looking at its representation on the contemporary stage. Send abstracts to Elizabeth Fifer at ef00@lehigh.edu.
Feeling Wrong: Postbellum Adaptations of Sentimental Literary Conventions: This panel examines ways 19th century women after the Civil War adapt the literary conventions of Sentimentalism to challenge assumptions central to Sentimental culture. Papers might address the ideas of individual postbellum authors, particular literary conventions, an assumption’s adaptation across time, or other ways message and medium conflict in the writing of postbellum women working with and against antebellum Sentimental conventions. Email 300 to 500 word abstracts to Michael Cadwallader at cadwallader@unc.edu.
Fire and Rust Remembered: Legacies of the Urban Crisis in Contemporary Culture: This panel will explore how recent literature, film, television, and other media have attempted to revisit the “urban crisis,” the long series of riots and massive white flight that transformed the U.S. city in the 1960’s. The emphasis is on how issues of historical memory become imbricated with the complex of racial, socioeconomic, gender, and spatiopolitical conflicts that define the urban crisis as a historical and theoretical problem. Email abstracts to Patrick W. Gallagher at the NYU Dept. of Comparative Literature, pwg211@nyu.edu.
Gender, Sexuality and New Perspectives in Asian American Literature and Cinema: This panel explores all aspects of gender and sexuality in Asian American literature and film. Topics can include but are not limited to: women, femininity and family; racialization and minority experience; intimacy and heteronormativity; disability and belonging; diasporas and global migrations of ideas, people, objects; representations of cities, the land and environment; queer Asian America; inter-Asian relations in a globalized world; masculinity and citizenship. Please email 300 word abstract and bio to kdaiya@gwu.edu
Geocritical New England: This panel will explore fictional landscapes of New England, particularly in their vexed relationships to the actual geographies negotiated by inhabitants of New England. Possible topics include but are not limited to: colonial accounts of the ‘new’ land; the relationship between transcendental nature studies and growing industrialization; the role of local color and regionalist writing in shaping national perceptions of New England. Papers from all historical periods welcome. Submit 300 word abstracts to Rachel Collins at racollin@syr.edu.
House and Home in 20th Century American Film and Literature: In light of America’s recent housing crisis, it seems a timely occasion to reconsider national ideas about houses, homes and home ownership as reflected in film and literature. Please submit 250-500 word abstracts on the representation of houses and the ideology of home to Megan Hamilton at mhamilto@brandeis.edu
In Memory of Radio: Modernity, (Post) Metropolis, and American Writing (Seminar): Session seeks papers on exchanges between American writers & the metropolis during the late 20th century. Asking where and how American writers locate representations of urban space, we pose new questions at the intersection of American urban geography & literature: Is Detroit an exurb of Alabama? When will the Camden renaissance begin? Where do we catch the last train for Newark? Seminar looks to reframe conversations concerned with 21st-century American cityscape. Send queries and abstracts to Michael Antonucci <mantonucci@keene.edu>.
In the Wake of 9/11: American Texts in the Twenty-First Century: The ten-year anniversary of 9/11 raises new questions about the possibilities and limitations of memorialization, bringing new complexity to acts of re-evaluation and re-assessment. What emerges in American literature, drama, television, and film in the wake of 9/11? What are the ghosts of 9/11? As we move further into the twenty-first century, how does 9/11 figure in the landscape of American texts and in critical discourse? Please send 500 word abstracts to Lisa Perdigao at lperdiga@fit.edu.
J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur: American Paradox: Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur’s Letters from an American Farmer and Sketches of 18th-Century America remain relevant because of their exploration of American contradictions, and the manner in which they negotiate the paradoxes of American identity. This panel will examine the tensions at the heart of Crèvecoeur’s writings, and explore whether some sort of balance (or “equipoise,” to use farmer James’s term) is possible in our contradictory America. Please send 300-500 word abstracts to Tanya.Radford@dc.edu.
Label Me Latina or Latino: Papers that address the languages and identities of Latinas/os in literature, theatre, or film are welcome for this panel. Suggestions include: Topics that address the diverse histories, cultures, identity politics, migration patterns, or other aspects of Latina/o populations in the United States. Please send abstracts to: Kathryn Quinn-Sanchez at ksanchez@georgian.edu
Levinas in Antebellum America: This panel welcomes abstracts exploring connections between the post-deconstruction ethical thought of Emmanuel Levinas and antebellum American literature. Please send abstracts with name, affiliation, and email to timstrodemeister@gmail.com
‘Luminously indiscreet’: The Visibility and Vision of Gwendolyn Brooks: In her mid-fifties, Gwendolyn Brooks began a statement about her plans for her poetry with the playful and memorable phrase, “in my next future.” Ten years after her death, we are rounding into another of her next futures–as an icon of American poetry. This panel undertakes to outline what that future is beginning to look like, by reflecting on the range of achievement that forms its foundation. Papers are welcome focusing on any phase or element of her career. 300-400 word abstracts to Bill Waddell, St. John Fisher College, bwaddell@sjfc.edu
Mapping Success and Failure in American Literature: This panel will examine the definitions, representations and critiques of “success” and “failure” as central themes in 19th and 20th American literature. How has literature mapped tensions between the idea of the self-made man and marketplace vicissitudes, or reconciled the drive of ambition and the call to moral and civic virtue? How has the identity of “the loser” been the rallying point around which notions and discourses of success have been challenged or reinforced? Please send 300-500 word abstracts to Lisette Schillig, lschilli@lhup.edu.
Naming and Framing: Identity Construction in Children’s Literature and Culture: This panel will use naming as a framework or entry point for discussing representations of identity construction in children’s literature. Papers may consider questions like: What happens when children reclaim the naming process for themselves? Or: How does naming signify broader issues of power and control of space and identity, especially as they pertain to gender or race/ethnicity? Submit abstracts of 250-500 words to Julie Cassidy at jcassidy@bmcc.cuny.edu
New Jersey: This panel will explore the literary--all genres--and film renderings of NeMLA’s 2011 host state, New Jersey. Those passing through often think of the state as nothing more than the industrial wasteland viewed from the windows as one counts the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike. But those ‘gone to look for America’ would do well to pause in this state, in many ways a microcosm of the nation as a whole. This panel will tap into that rich representational diversity. Send abstracts to Marlene Clark, westgate63@yahoo.com
No Longer Silent: Trauma in Contemporary Asian American (Korean) Literature: This panel seeks to theorize trauma and American identity specifically in the works of Keller, Rae-Lee, and Choi, Korean American authors of the post-1965 Immigration Act generation. Topics or critical paradigms can include, but are not limited to: the abject, silence, subjectivity, transnationalism, femininity, masculinity, memory, politics, rape, torture, trauma theory, psychoanalytic theory, and reader-response. Send 1-page abstract and brief bio as Word attachment to Jina Lee at jlbmetro@aol.com, with “NEMLA” in subject line.
Pan-American Immigration Narratives: Board Sponsored. This session welcomes papers examining the work by Caribbean-American and Latino/a-American authors tracing immigration experiences, including work by Pulitzer-prize winning author Junot Diaz. Please submit a 250-500 word abstract in body of email to Beth Smith <beth.smith@ncc.edu> with ‘Immigration’ in the Subject line.
Physician/Pastor, Doctor/Divine: Intersections of American Religion and Medicine: This panel explores the interwoven roles of the pastor and the physician in American culture from Cotton Mather to House, M.D. How are the roles of physician and pastor imagined as convergent or in competition? How do fictional physician and pastor characters figure in debates about bodies, souls, and individual will? How is the sociopolitical authority of ministers and physicians negotiated, and how do the roles of doctor and divine change as women enter these professions? Send 250- to 500-word abstracts to Ashley Reed (reeda@email.unc.edu).
A (Post)Secular Age: Protestant Epistemologies and the American Novel: This panel invites papers that challenge a single, secular epistemology for the realist novel. We are particularly interested in papers that deal with the wide array of popular Protestant novels in nineteenth- and twentieth-century America: What do these novels tell us about the relationship between historical empiricism, secularism, and religious belief? Could it be that these works complicate dominate narratives of secularism in ways we have yet to account for? Please send 250 word abstracts to Kathleen Howard at khoward@rci.rutgers.edu.
Redeeming Modernity: Economy, Religion, and Literature in Modern America: According to received wisdom, modernity is most notably distinguished from previous eras by the secularization of society. However, in the work of modernist writers, fine artists, and activists, we find an abiding & sophisticated treatment of religion in America. This panel examines modernists’ engagement with American religion and the ways in which this alters our prevailing conceptions of modernity. We will examine the role of religion in the conflict between labor & capital & in the work of the American cultural front. ajball@purdue.edu
Restaging Their/Our Lives: Performing Biography on the Contemporary Stage: How do contemporary American playwrights and performers stage life and death stories, both individual and communal? How do the genres of biography and drama expand and interrogate one another on the contemporary American stage? Presentations on playwrights and performance artists (such as Anna Deavere Smith), staging writers’ lives, theater and testimony, and theatrical responses to 9-11 all welcome. Please send abstracts and inquiries to Susan Gilmore at gilmores@ccsu.edu.
‘Savages we call them’: Imagining the Native in Early American Literature: This panel will consider the transformations in attitudes and representations of Native Americans in early American literature to consider how the figure of the Native—through various forms of exclusion, allegorization, and appropriation—functions in the forming of the Anglo-American identity. All critical and theoretical approaches are welcome. Please send 250-word abstracts to Dr. Sean Kelly at sean.kelly@wilkes.edu.
The Single Woman (Roundtable): This roundtable seeks papers on the single woman in American literature from the 19th century to the present. What are the affects and attachments that define the single woman? What is the significance of loneliness and community, of childlessness and motherhood, of queerness, race, or social class in representations of single women? Please send 300-500 word abstracts to Kamila Janiszewska <kaj66@cornell.edu> or to Sarah Ensor <see23@cornell.edu>.
Social Issues in American Drama: This panel will examine social issues in American drama. The topics of the panel include, but are not limited to: the Great Depression, capitalism, civil rights movement, war, consumerism, issues of race and gender. Please submit 250-word abstracts to Cigdem Usekes at usekesc@wcsu.edu.
Suddenly Everyone Has a Cherokee Great-Grandmother: Teaching Native Literatures (Roundtable): This roundtable session focuses on classroom teaching strategies in Native American literature courses and aims to address such questions as: How do we challenge stereotypical representations in courses that take a “survey” approach? How does one teach Native literary texts to a population of students who do not necessarily reflect those experiences? How does the instructor’s own subject position impact pedagogical strategies and the classroom experience for students and teacher? E-mail 500-word proposals to jdymond@spfldcol.edu.
The Text of the Body: Art, Technology, Slavery. and Empire in the 19th century (Seminar): This seminar session seeks papers on the intersections between transatlantic representations and discourses of slavery and empire in the 19th century. How did aesthetics/new print and photographic developments affect the ways in which enslaved persons/colonial subjects were portrayed? What sorts of national investments do such images and their publishing contexts imply? How do these representations elide/align with constructions of self by enslaved or subjugated persons? 300-500 word abstracts and brief bios to Joy Bracewell, joyjohn@uga.edu
The Acknowledged Legislator: A Critical (Re)Assessment of Martín Espada: Spanning a career of nearly thirty years, Martín Espada has published seventeen books as poet, editor, essayist, and translator. But despite such a large and diverse corpus, Espada criticism on the whole tends to adhere to a decidedly limited interpretive spectrum. “A Critical (Re)Assessment of Martín Espada” seeks proposals that advocate new ways of reading and discussing Espada’s canon. Please send panel discussion abstracts of 300 words accompanied by a brief biographical statement to Edward J. Carvalho at e.j.carvalho@iup.edu.
Thinking Comparatively in Contemporary Literature: How might interpretive juxtapositions between such divergent modes as fiction and nonfiction, literary and nonliterary, and verbal and visual articulate some of the current ambivalence about method in the discipline of literary studies? Papers welcome on all aspects of comparative thinking by period, genre, or media in relation to 20th/21st century literature. Abstracts and short vitae to Cornelius Collins, Rutgers University (corneliuscollins@rocketmail.com).
Toni Morrison and Marilynne Robinson: Revisioning the American West: CFP: This panel investigates Toni Morrison’s and Marilynne Robinson’s revisioning of the American West and subsequently the tradition of American literary criticism, and, specifically, the longstanding tradition of the hero of the American West. Panelists might want to consider revisions of race and gender within the authors’ respective fiction and nonfiction, confrontations with American literary criticism, and the role of the new American hero. Inquiries or 250-500 word abstracts (and brief C.V.) to Jane Wood at jane.wood@park.edu.
Transnational ‘Environmentalities’ in Nineteenth-Century Anglophone Literature: Nineteenth-Century American, British, and other Anglophone literatures comprise subject texts of this Panel that considers literary ‘environmentality.’ Of special interest are works recovered for ecocriticism in which authors, however briefly, consider environmental phenomena, issues, and ideas that transcend the boundaries of the nation state. Above all, the Panel will examine the coalescence of various Anglophone literatures across national boundaries, revelatory of emerging global environmentalist sensibilities. (pfinn@temple.edu)
Trends in 21st Century American Drama: This panel seeks papers on changing trends in 21st century American drama. How are plays written post 2000 different what what came before? What new voices are appearing on American stages? What plays are being revived, and what does this say about our current century? Please send 300-500 word abstracts and brief biographical statements to Pamela Monaco at pmonaco@brandman.edu.
Utopian Impulses: Hope, Futurity, and Change in American Literature: This panel invites papers that consider utopian impulses in any genre or time period of American literature. What elements of utopian thought, such as hope, desire, futurity, and change, are central to texts that are have not otherwise been considered ‘utopian’? Expanding the genre of utopian literature, how can we contend with the utopian call for a better society prevalent in American literature, national identity, and individual subjectivities? Please submit 200-300 word abstracts to Katherine Broad at katherine.broad@gmail.com
The Vicious Circle: The Days, Dames, and (K)nights of the Algonquin Round Table: In 1919, several New York wits ‘roasted’ drama critic Alexander Woollcott at the Algonquin hotel. They enjoyed the afternoon so much that they met again as the Algonquin Round Table for the next ten years. This panel will consider the wit and artistry of the Algonquin Round Table. Panelists are invited to submit papers addressing the group or any members: Adams, Benchley, Broun, Connelly, Kaufman, Parker, Ross, Sherwood, Toohey, Woollcott. Our goal: remove some dust from this exciting 20th-century group. (cathy.fagan@ncc.edu)
Willa Cather: Themes and Narrative Techniques: Submissions are invited on any aspect of Cather’s fiction. All perspectives are welcome. Suggested topics include the importance of place, race and ethnicity, family relations, friendship, the arts and artists, religion, love and marriage. Papers may focus on one novel or on a short story or on Cather and another writer. Please send 300-500 words abstracts to Elsa Nettels, College of William and Mary, exnett@email.wm.edu or to 211 Indian Springs Road, Willilamsburg, VA 23185.
William Carlos Williams and the Meaning of the Local: In a short prose piece on Kenneth Burke published in Imaginations, William Carlos Williams writes that “[o]ne has to learn what the meaning of the local is, for universal purposes. The local is the only thing that is universal” (358). Paper proposals are invited that examine the personal, artistic, and /or philosophical meaning of the local for Williams, as well as proposals that consider Williams’s influence upon others representing the local. Please direct 300 word abstracts to Paul Cappucci, Georgian Court University, cappuccip@georgian.edu.
Women and Wilderness: Ecofemism in Early American Literature: This panel invites papers which take an ecofeminist approach to American literature by women in the 17th to mid-19th centuries, fiction and non-fiction, which explore ways in which women interact with the natural world, and the consequences of such relationships. How do women in the texts portray relationships with the land? Are they aware of, complicit in or attempting to resist strategies of patriarchal domination which are also being applied to the environment? Please send 300-500 word abstracts to Ashley Bourne at abourne@reynolds.edu.

British and Anglophone

British and Anglophone: “Dickens in 2012: Preparing for Boz’s Bicentennial”

Cultural Studies and Film: “Detective Fiction and Other Genres: Friends or Foes?”

Spanish/Portuguese: “Comparative Approaches to Early Modern Spanish and British Drama”

Transnational Literatures: “Journeys of the Bicultural Self: Narrative Geographies from the Middle East”; “Memory of Borders, Borders of Memory: Life Writing at a Distance”; “Modernism, Modernity, and Politics: Face-off or Interface?”; “Post/Colonial Nostalgia in South Asian Literature”

Women’s and Gender Studies: “Contemporary Black British Women’s Writing”; “Flânerie and the Rise of the Modern Urban Woman”; “Interdisciplinary Studies and Women Modernists”

African Modernisms, African Modernities: This panel will explore the intersections between modernist studies and African literary studies. Of particular interest are papers that address how African literary engagements with both modernism and modernity evaluate and lead us to rethink a notion of the modern that has traditionally been centered in Europe. Please send 200-300 word abstracts to Mark DiGiacomo (markjd@eden.rutgers.edu) or Megan Paustian (mpausti@rutgers.edu).
Amateur Performance in the Long Nineteenth Century: The ubiquity of amateur performance in the long nineteenth century (1780-1914) is often peripherally mentioned but rarely made the primary focus of scholarship on the period. Proposals are invited that consider country home theatricals, performance aboard naval and merchant vessels, middle-class parlor theatricals, school and university performances, amateur benefit productions, and anything in-between. Please submit a proposal of 250-500 words electronically to (mary.isbell@gmail.com)
Arthurian Avatars: The King Arthur Myth from Medieval to Modern Times: The myth of King Arthur has appeared in many forms, including prose and lyric romances, serious and satiric novels, operas and musicals, films and graphic novels. Each version offers new insights into the ethical, theological, psychological and socio-political ramifications of the chivalric ideal. Why has this legend retained its fascination over the centuries? How does it inform our understanding of culture and cultural values, such as honor, devotion, and both spiritual and carnal love? Send 250-400 word abstract to Josh.Cohen@massart.edu.
The Black Maritime Atlantic in the Nineteenth Century: This panel invites papers on Black Atlantic sailors, migrants, slaves and pirates in nineteenth-century maritime literature, addressing the variety of literary forms engaged in representing sea-faring. Some questions that papers might consider are: In what terms are the multiple racial geographies of maritime experience described and narrated? What sorts of literary and cosmopolitan cultural exchange are developed along with the intermingling of different racial and ethnic groups aboard ships? Kristie Allen <kristie.allen08@gmail.com>
Bodies and Victorian Machines: This panel will examine the representational and material relations between bodies and machines in the Victorian era: laborers-as-machines; factory accidents; robots and automatons; prostheses and machine-as-appendage; women as baby machines; networks and communication machines. Also welcome are papers that explore this topic in Steampunk texts and contexts. Please send 250-500 word abstracts to Jessica Kuskey jekuskey@syr.edu
Coming of Age: The Australian Young Adult Novel: Board Sponsored. This session welcomes abstracts on novels written by Australian authors with youths as the main protagonists, including the recent novels The Book Thief and Vernon God Little. Andrew Schopp <schoppa@ncc.edu>
Contemporary Theatre in South Africa: Board-Sponsored. This session seeks papers exploring South African drama in the 20th century and up to the present. Papers might explore tragic, comic, historical, musical, ethnic, postcolonial, subcultural, mythic, religious, gender-bending, genre-blending, traditional, or innovative themes or techniques. Send inquires and abstracts (as MS Word attachments) to Suzanne Kaebnick: suzanne.kaebnick@ncc.edu.
Creativity and Imagination at the Fin De Siècle (1870-1910) (Roundtable): This panel will discuss the roles, powers and dangers attributed to creativity and the imagination at the fin de siècle. Inspired by evolutionary science and experimental psychology, many writers of this era took the mind’s faculty of imagination as their subject. The topic preoccupied New Women writers, utopian socialists, and those interested in drug addiction alike. Since this topic has yet to undergo sustained critical consideration, this roundtable seeks to raise the profile of this emergent field of inquiry. (emccormick@lagcc.cuny.edu)
The Criminal Underworld in Medieval Literature: How does medieval literature imagine criminal transgression? Do texts portray criminal transgression in the same way as moral transgression? What is the role of punishment in medieval literature? Papers will consider such themes as morality, legality, perceptions of the body and the body politic, social cooperation, community, conflict, and conflict resolution. Please send abstracts to Pamela Longo, Jeremy DeAngelo, and Jeanette Zissell via crimenemla@gmail.com
Dickens in 2012: Preparing for Boz’s Bicentennial: In 2012, Dickensians around the globe will mark the 200th anniversary of Charles Dickens’s birth. This panel seeks contributions to a general discussion of how we can join the celebration in our classrooms and communities, including suggestions about exhibits, course modules, service learning projects or readings and/or performances of Dickens’s works. One-page abstracts may be sent via regular or electronic mail to Mary Ann Tobin, English Department, Triton College, 2000 Fifth Avenue, River Grove, IL 60171 or mtobin@triton.edu.
Dracula and Beyond: The Evolution of the Vampire: This panel seeks papers that explore the figure of the vampire in folklore, fiction, film, and popular culture, including Stoker’s Dracula and its literary predecessors and descendents. Papers should address the evolution of the metaphorical significance of vampires as cultural barometers for analyzing themes of sexuality, xenophobia, contagion, and/or consumption. Please submit 250-500 word abstracts to Anne DeLong at delong@kutztown.edu
Drag, Dress & Disguise in Eighteenth-Century Novels: Though masquerades were roundly denounced by many in pamphlets and sermons, and the ease of the lower-classes to ape their betters sartorially worried preachers and snobs alike, the novels of the eighteenth-century portray masquerades, disguises, and class cross-dressing in a variety of lights, both positive and negative. This panel will explore these tropes in order to facilitate a discussion of eighteenth-century discourses on dress, sexuality, class and empire. Please send abstracts of 250 words to Ula Lukszo (ulukszo@ic.sunysb.edu).
Economies of Witchcraft in African Literature: The goal of this panel is to provide a forum for exploring intersections between witchcraft, political economies, and African literature. How have African writers approached the problem of witchcraft? What do these approaches suggest about dynamics of modernity, gender, medicine, religion, science, history, and, above all, economics? Please send 250-300 word abstracts to timothy.johns@murraystate.edu.
Facing In-Yer-Face Drama: This panel will explore lasting impact of the In Yer Face Theater movement. This panel will profile the subsequent playwrights, producers, and directors that transformed the legacy of In Yer Face from forgettable phase to instrumental movement in British drama. Please send inquiries or abstracts to bartley.sean@gmail.com.
Feeling In Common: Cultivating Sympathy in the Writings of George Eliot (Seminar): This seminar proposes to consider the aesthetic, social, and ethical significance of communal feeling in George Eliot’s writing. The extension of sympathy is the aesthetic and ethical aim of Eliot’s fiction, but this aim is complicated and limited by differences of geography, class, culture, nation, and gender. Eliot’s exploration of the dynamics of communal feeling thus provides a rich site for considering nineteenth-century projects of culture formation. Please send 250-300 word abstracts to Meghan Freeman at mfreeman@tulane.edu
‘I am born’: The Characters of Charles Dickens: Saluting the 2012 Boz Bicentennial, this panel explores Charles Dickens’s art of characterization in his novels and stories. The ability of readers to visualize figures in OT, CC, DC, TTC, and GE, for example, links his oeuvre with the allegorical tradition of Spenser, Bunyan, Hogarth and Grimm. Papers analyzing Dickens’s adaptation of allegory in his character portrayals are as welcome as those analyzing the way characters have been further adapted by the stage, cinema, and visual arts. Send 1-page abstracts to Wm Moeck (moeckw@ncc.edu).
Intellectual and Manual Labor in Early Modern England (Seminar): Focused on early modern England, this seminar will explore interrelations between intellectual and manual labor, ambiguities inherent in the concept of labor, and models and metaphors of labor. Papers might consider, for instance, representations of one form of labor in terms of another, divisions of labor in domestic and other spaces, and management of agrarian labor—in poetry, drama, prose fictions, sermons, and other texts. Please send 250-500 word abstracts to logans@msu.edu.
John Milton and the History of the Book: Complementing Rutgers exhibition of Milton’s printed and manuscript work, this panel will explore problems in the history of the book in the 17th century, focusing on various aspects of the material text and the history of reading: the relationship between manuscripts and printed texts, the ways in which books were marked by readers, the relationship between author and stationer, and the problems of authorship in early modern texts. Papers need not be focused on Milton. Thomas Fulton (thomas.fulton@rutgers.edu)
The Languages of James Joyce: This panel welcomes papers investigating Joyce’s multilingualism. What are the aesthetic, ethic and political implications of crossing language boundaries, narrating through multilingual puns and polyglot pastiche in Joyce’s works? Suitable topics include the author’s complicated relation with Irish, the relationship between Joyce’s multilingualism and cosmopolitanism, and the challenge of translating Joyce’s multilingual texts. Send 250-word abstract to salvatop@rci.rutgers.edu and mkager@eden.rutgers.edu
Magic and Modernism: What is the influence of folklore, mysticism, mythology, and the occult on the development of early Modernism, Surrealism, and Neo-Romanticism in the first part of the twentieth century? How does magic function in literary and visual narrative representations as a counterpoint to modernity’s transparency and rational progress? Inquiries and 300-500 word abstracts exploring the tension between progressive modernity and romantic knowledge to Noreen O’Connor, King’s College, noreenoconnor@kings.edu.
Marvell and the Theorization of History: This panel will examine the major poems of Andrew Marvell through innovative modes. It will highlight approaches that theorize history and yet avoid the common emphases on high politics and micro-history. And it is interested in attempts to tackle critical enigmas, such as coming to terms with an oeuvre that includes perhaps the greatest carpe diem poem in English, “To His Coy Mistress,” and yet often also exhibits a marked tendency to avoid adult sexuality. Philip Mirabelli philmirabelli@aol.com
Midnight’s Children: Thirty Years Later: Board Sponsored. Thirty years after winning the Booker Prize, Salman Rushdie’s novel, Midnight’s Children (1981), continues to garner critical, scholarly, and popular acclaim (in 2008, it was awarded the title of Best of the Booker). This panel will draw together papers that consider the novel’s place in Rushdie’s oeuvre, its influence on contemporary fiction, and any new perspectives that might cast new critical light on it. Send abstracts in body of email to Neela Saxena <Neela.Saxena@ncc.edu> with ‘Rushdie’ in the subject line.
Mothers of the Novel: Women’s Writing of the Eighteenth Century: This panel seeks proposals for papers treating the English-language novel and women’s writing as it emerged in the eighteenth century. How did women contribute to the formation of this genre, and how did they use it to debate such issues as masculinity and femininity, Englishness and otherness, power and powerlessness? Please submit 250-500 word abstracts to Kristine Jennings at kjennin1@binghamton.edu.
Muriel Spark: Before, During and After The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie: The panel seeks papers on the works of Muriel Spark, poetry, prose, and literary criticism. Papers might address how Sparks’ career has been defined by The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Sparks’ experimentation with the novel as compared to other writers such as Ian McEwan or Flann O’Brien, Sparks’ place as a Scottish woman writer, and her work as a literary critic. Papers on teaching Sparks’ work are also welcome as are treatments of the film, radio, and theater adaptations of her work. Beverly Schneller: beverly.schneller@millersville.edu.
‘My dwelling place among you’: Faith and Landscape in the Middle Ages: This panel seeks papers addressing these questions: How does cosmology inform representations of place? How are representations of places in medieval texts dependent upon Scriptural authority? How do medieval landscapes self-consciously mirror Biblical landscapes? Do medieval metaphors of place assume a Biblical cosmology? In what ways do medieval narratives explicitly reference Biblical landscapes as an aid to commentary upon social or political concerns of their day? Send abstracts to Erin Mullally at mullalee@lemoyne.edu
Narrative is the Essence of History: The History of the Historical Novel (Roundtable): This roundtable will explore the genre of historical fiction. Topics include: reception; historical context; historiographic and literary theory; fact and fiction; reappraisal of those who have not received their critical due; “serious” and “popular” historical fiction; recent subgenres within historical fiction, etc. What is the essence of historical fiction? Why does it continue to be such a popular and resilient genre? What is its history? Please submit 250-300 word abstracts (MSWord) to Jackie Cameron at jackiec159@hotmail.com.
Neomedievalism: Neomedievalism, as cultural antithetical fantasy to our ongoing “modernity,” has since Umberto Eco’s 1973 essay “Dreaming of the Middle Ages,” developed as mode of global/local geopolitical and socio-economic analysis. This panel seeks papers on aspects of neomedievalism in Renaissance to contemporary literature and popular culture (film, RPGs and videogames, comics, music), and sociopolitical theories (nation state fragmentation, faith vs. science, sovereignty, the postsecular, neoconservatism). 300-word abstracts to daniel.lukes@nyu.edu
New Approaches to Early Modern Historical Drama: This panel seeks to elicit new work on the history play of the English renaissance. Submissions on any aspect of the historical drama of the period are welcome, including studies of individual plays and playwrights. Especially desirable is work that seeks to re-evaluate how we contemplate the history play in terms of genre. Miles Taylor <taylorme@lemoyne.edu>
New Old Stories: Reinventing African Narratives in Black British Fiction: While the conventions of the European novel shape the work of contemporary Black British authors such as Diran Adebayo, Diana Evans, and Valerie Mason-John, their fiction is informed in equal measure by African narrative traditions, which the authors engage in productive dialogic relationships with modern European novelistic discourses. This panel will explore the appropriation, reinvention and transformation of African narratives by British novelists of African descent. Send abstracts to Magdalena Maczynska <mmaczynska@mmm.edu>.
New Perspectives on Victorian Sensation Fiction and Modernity: Panel participants should examine specific text(s) that demonstrate literary, historic and cultural links between sensation fiction and Modernity. 500 word Abstract and CV to Sophie Lavin SUNY Stony Brook: blavin@optonline.net. Abstracts that explore underrepresented texts and/or authors are especially encouraged.
The New William Golding: This panel will seek to trace the progress of Golding studies in recent years. Can Golding be read as a constituent of popular cultural movements of his period, such as the Angry Young Men? Does he fit only with Lessing’s fabular discourse? Papers studying any aspect of Golding’s work, his cultural ties in Britain from the fifties to the eighties, the reasons for his relative obscurity, and/or his contribution to literary studies more broadly are welcomed. Send 500wd (max) abstracts to nckprkr@gmail.com with Subject of ‘Golding Panel’
Performing Knowledge: This panel invites papers that examine how literary texts perform knowledge, and how literature becomes an object of scholarly knowledge in a variety of disciplinary settings. Panelists might address literary representations of the cleric, the virtuoso, or the pedant; the use of scholarly paratexts (the gloss, the appendix, the footnote); or, more broadly, the influence of disciplinarity and professionalization on the literary text. Send abstracts to Sean Barry, sean.barry@rutgers.edu, and John Savarese, john.savarese@rutgers.edu.
‘Quit the road to ill-being’: Nineteenth-Century Ecocriticism: This panel invites ecocritical readings of 19th-century British literature. The Romantics are better known for their ecological consciousness, but how did the Victorians relate to the non-human world? react to industry? I am interested in “against the grain” readings: discussions of Austen, Scott, or Victorian authors engaging with urban spaces or transforming landscapes. How do these readings shed light on our current climate crisis? Please e-mail abstracts of 250-500 words to Margaret Wright, mswright@ic.sunysb.edu.
Re-tellings: Literature as Literary Criticism: Whether we call them twice told tales or parallel texts, creative re-tellings locate their source in previous texts, inspired by them, responding to them, or indeed, writing against them. This panelinvites proposals that examine not only the ways in which twice told tales respond to previous works but how the re-tellings function as a form of literary criticism transforming the original story. Please direct queries and / or submit proposals and a brief biography to rbode@trentu.ca.
Religion in the Shelley Circle: In recognition of the 200th anniversary of Percy Shelley’s The Necessity of Atheism, this panel encourages participants to examine the works of the younger Romantics in terms of their treatment of religion. Papers specifically on the writers of the Shelley circle are especially encouraged, but those focusing on other writers of the time or which consider connections to writers of the previous generation of Romantics will also be considered. Proposals should be emailed as MS Word attachments to L. Adam Mekler, adam.mekler@morgan.edu.
Renaissance Trauma: This panel seeks papers that explore the experience and/or representation of trauma in Early-Modern texts and of how Early-Modern cultural, religious, and political institutions dealt with trauma. Papers that look at trauma theory and its use in Early-Modern studies are also invited. Send 250-500 word abstracts and a brief biography or CV to Paul Rosa <Paul.Rosa@ncc.edu>
Representing a Cure: Embodiment, Medical Knowledge, and Early Modern Literature: This panel invites papers that situate literary representation in relation to medical knowledge within a wide range of early modern texts, from anatomical treatises and manuals of physic to midwifery handbooks and herbals. What is at stake in representing forms of medical knowledge, practice, and practitioners in early modern literary texts? Please send 300-500 word abstracts to Katherine Schaap Williams, katwill@eden.rutgers.edu.
Revisiting Easter 1916: In the words of William Butler Yeats, Ireland’s 1916 Easter Rising gave birth to a new and “terrible beauty,” which in five years will see its 100th birthday. Looking ahead to this centennial, this panel session will reexamine the literary, cultural, aesthetic, historical, and political dimensions of the Easter Rising. Please submit 300-400 word abstracts to William Chad Stanley, Wilkes University, chad.stanley@wilkes.edu.
Samuel Beckett and the Encounter of Philosophy and Literature (Seminar): The seminar session seeks to explore the complex and paradoxical relationship between the discourses of philosophy and literature focusing on the works of one of the 20th century European masters Samuel Beckett. It encourages papers on Beckett’s reading of philosophers and vice versa to problematize the philosophy-literature interface. Please send your abstracts (300-500 words) to Arka Chattopadhyay, Jadavpur University at the following e-mail-ids--arkachattopadhyay2002@yahoo.co.in/arkaless@gmail.com.
Samuel Beckett’s Bilingualism: This panel will address the specific question of bilingualism in the work of Samuel Beckett. How can we understand this unique literary language? Can Beckett’s bilingualism be understood as a phenomenon that goes beyond linguistic boundaries? Please submit 300-500 word abstracts in French or English on any aspect of Beckett’s bilingualism to Nadia Louar, Email: louarn@uwosh.edu.
Secrets and Surveillance in the Victorian Novel: This panel seeks papers that will consider the Victorian novel’s preoccupation with secrets and issues of privacy. How do Victorian novelists conceptualize the interplay between secrets and surveillance in their texts? What is the cultural significance of the Victorian novel’s attention to secrecy? And what does the preoccupation with images of surveillance in Victorian texts reveal? Please submit 250-500 word abstracts to Karina Everett, everett@fordham.edu.
Shakespearean Adaptations and Appropriations (Roundtable): Shakespeare and his characters sell everything from fishing equipment to candy. Popular television shows and movies have been inspired by Shakespeare’s plays. This roundtable will explore the ways in which Shakespeare and his plays ‘appear’ in modern popular culture. Participants will consider how these appropriations and adaptations use Shakespeare and examine the impact of these variations in the modern world. Please send an proposal of 250 words to Pamela Monaco, Brandman University, pmonaco@brandman.edu.
‘The record of bitter moments’: Prison Writing as a Genre: This panel seeks papers on the role of prisons in textual and literary creation. What are the various prison experiences across time periods--the gaol, the bridewell, the convent, the workhouse-prison, the psychiatric hospital--and how does each serve as a site of cultural production? How does the prison intersect with issues of gender, class, and nation? How does prison writing fit with other generic forms? Please send abstracts of no more than 300 words and brief biographical statements to Kristina Lucenko, kristina.lucenko@stonybrook.edu.
Theorizing the Victorian Novel: This session will explore the ways in which literary theory can be helpful in illuminating Victorian novels and those accompanying social contexts and issues that we find in the Victorian age. How might Victorian novels in turn be helpful in illuminating different schools of theory? (Robert Lougy, Penn State University, rxl1@psu.edu)
Transnational Ireland: The Celtic Tiger and Beyond: This panel seeks papers exploring how literary and filmic representations of Ireland have been affected by both the Celtic Tiger and its precipitous end. How is the Irish identity negotiated within a transnational context? How have new models of representation influenced contemporary artists? How has the transnational transcended the hegemony of patriarchal structures to provide a more significant platform for women’s voices? Send inquiries or abstracts (as MS Word attachments) to Daniel Shea, Mount Saint Mary College: shea@msmc.edu.
Twentieth-Century Blake: This panel seeks to find new links between Blake and the twentieth-century writers with whom he is most often associated - Yeats, Huxley, and Lawrence, among others - and to put Blake’s art in dialogue with other artists, including graphic novelists, filmmakers, and non-Anglo-American writers. Submissions that address Blake’s relationship to issues in contemporary philosophy will also be considered. Please send 300-500-word abstracts as Word or PDF attachments to Jon Gagas, Temple University, jongagas@temple.edu.
Urban Spaces and Contact Zones in Early 20th Century Literature: This panel is interested in the modern metropolis’s complex relationship to the periphery and in recasting the conversation by examining literary urban representations of diasporic, migrant, and marginal communities emerging within the built environment. This session will explore the literary city as a material and mythologized space to ask how urban spaces become sites of contact that produce narratives of identity/community/exchange/movement etc. in British and American literature. Abstracts to sarahcornish@gmail.com
Victorian Women Writers: Constructions of Masculinity: Few critics have addressed fully the various models of masculinity extant in British Victorian women’s writings. How are men ‘constructed’? Do these women writers adhere to the same ideals of Victorian manliness as male authors? This panel will focus on Victorian women writers’ representations of masculinity in the mid to late nineteenth-century. We welcome abstracts on British authors ranging from Elizabeth Gaskell to Florence Nightingale. Email 250-500 word abstracts to KJEPIKE@salisbury.edu and Kristin.LeVeness@ncc.edu
Wilde Family Values: This panel invites papers that examine either the lives and works of members of Oscar Wilde’s family—Jane Francesca Wilde (“Speranza”), Constance Lloyd, Vyvyan Holland, Dolly Wilde, Merlin Holland, etc.—or representations from any media of these figures, including biopics, stage dramas, and Neo-Victorian novels. Margaret D. Stetz, University of Delaware, stetzm@udel.edu

Canadian

Transnational Literatures: “Canada and the African Diasporic Literary Imaginary”

Gender and Labor in Contemporary French-Canadian Literature: This panel seeks to analyze representations of work performed by men and women in French-Canadian literature and to examine the ways in which the women’s movement, the Quiet Revolution, NAFTA, and globalization impact the workforce for both sexes. Please send one-page proposals including contact information and a brief CV to Edith Vandervoort (dobyabear@earthlink.net). Papers may be presented in French or English.
Personal and Social Myth-making in the Work of Margaret Atwood: A central concern of Margaret Atwood’s work has been myth-making. She has said the Edible Woman and Surfacing are about characters with unworkable mythologies. The Handmaid’s Tale has been read as exploring potential consequences inherent in the beliefs(or mythologies) of religious conservatives. Her most recent work The Year of the Flood features a cult-like group. This panel seeks papers that examine Atwood’s evolving vision of the role of mythologies in our lives. Mary Lannon <mary.lannon@ncc.edu>
Women Writers and the Historical Novel in Canada: This panel seeks to strengthen our understanding of women writers and the historical novel in Canada. Proposals are invited that approach the topic from a variety of perspectives. Proposals that employ comparative, feminist, historicist, and/or materialist methodologies are welcome, as are those that focus on the reception of individual works or writers in specific historical, regional, or cultural contexts. Please send 200-250 word proposals to Andrea Cabajsky at andrea.cabajsky@umoncton.ca.

Comparative Languages

German: “Suddenness (Plötzlichkeit) and Literature”

Italian: “The Ecogothic in Italian Literature and Culture”; “Language(s) and Politics in/of Italian Theatre”; “Petrarch, Petrarchism and Beyond”; “Representations of Dante’s Inferno in the Visual Arts and in Literature”; “Traveling in and out of Italy”

LGBTQ: “LGBTQ Identities in Latin America”

Pedagogy: “Teaching Translation in the 21st Century”

Professional: “Translation: The ‘Next Big Thing’ to Revitalize the Humanities?”

Russian/Eastern European: “Russian Poetry: from Golden Age to Silver Age”

Spanish/Portuguese: “Women, Love, and Eroticism in Latin American Poetry”

Theory and Literary Criticism: “The Spatial Turn in Literary Theory”

Transnational Literatures: “Complicated Space: Reading the Transnational Text”; “Contemporary Nordic Literature”; “The Legacy of Scandinavian Drama”; “Traditional and Modern Medicine in Caribbean Literature”

Women’s and Gender Studies: “The Devil Comes in Many Genders: Depictions of the Diabolical in Literature”; “The Female Player in European Fiction (1780-1900): Gender Issues”

Aesthetics and Politics of Literary Multilingualism: Literary multilingualism has an ancient and continuous history and yet scholars and critics have taken up this issue only intermittently. This panel aims to discuss recent theories of literary multilingualism, its aesthetic elements and political implications as well as specific examples able to provide relevant models of analysis. Please send abstract (200-300 words) to Paola Gambarota, gambarot@rci.rutgers.edu
Duly Noted: Approaches to Paratext: This panel welcomes papers that question and analyze the roles and uses of paratexts in literature. It aims to show a broad spectrum of modalities of paratext across historical, national, linguistic, and technological boundaries. Possible topics include the origins of paratextual norms in different traditions, issues of authorship and intellectual property, paratexts as constructing alternate narratives, and paratexts as political tools. Please send 250-300 word abstracts in English to Anna Strowe (astrowe@complit.umass.edu).
The Fin de Siècle and the Idea of ‘End’ and Degeneration: This panel welcomes papers dealing with the different ideas and the representation of ‘end’ and degeneration in the arts and literature of the Western European fin de siècle. Among other things, the comparative study will reveal how the concept of degeneration is related to the national culture and identity. Marja Harmanmaa <marja.harmanmaa@helsinki.fi>
Fractured Identities and Transgressive Practices in the Fin-de-Siècle Novel: This panel will explore a number of preoccupations from fin-de-siècle European narrative (1880-1900) by examining texts notable for their decadent vision. Such works, imbued with an indelible sense of perversity, artificiality, egoism, and curiosity, present fractured identities and transgressive practices in order to consider l’Inconnaissable (the unknowable). Topics may include but are not limited to degeneration, fecundity, hysteria, industrialization, and sexual corruption. Send 500 word abstracts to Bryan Cameron at bryanc@sas.upenn.edu.
The Immortal Fairy Tale: Re-writings and Re-visions (Seminar): Recent literary production has seen a resurgence of a re-appropriation of the fairy tale that addresses current issues of identity construction inherent in its deconstruction of fairy tale stereotypes. The fairy tale genre has been re-written and re-visioned from a variety of perspectives: feminist theory, alterity, men studies and gender studies (to name a few). The fairy tale has become “immortal” in that it is continuously adapting to its new socio-cultural environment. Submit 250 word abstracts to Cristina Santos at csantos@brocku.ca.
Literary Dress: Fashioning the Fictional Self: This panel seeks to analyze how fashion operates in literature, with a particular interest in the concept of ‘fashion’ as a verb. Paper topics might include, but are not limited to: fashion as a Foucauldian technology of self; the pro-consumerist ‘girl-power’ movement as reaction to second-wave feminism; self-fashioning in the biography and autobiography; theories and criticism of text and fashion. Please send inquiries or 500-word abstracts as MSWord attachments to Heath Sledge and Helen Dunn at confabstracts@gmail.com
New Latin American Writing in the U.S.: This panel invites papers that examine the role of new Latin American writing in the U.S today. Fifty years after what was labeled as the “boom,” how are we approaching new Latin American texts? What do recent critiques reveal about our understanding and expectations of literary works written by Hispanic writers (writing in English, Spanish, or ‘Spanglish’)? What is the new Latin American narrative and what is getting lost in translation? Email abstracts (250-500 words) to Bernabé Mendoza (San Francisco State University) at mendozas@sfsu.edu
Revolutionary Terror (Seminar): We will also discuss how the French Revolution has been represented in literature and philosophically remembered. This panel welcomes discussions of eighteenth and nineteenth century philosophical sources (Rousseau, Robespierre, Kant, Burke, Marx) as well as later texts (Bataille, Blanchot, Lyotard, Arendt, Lefort), including works of fiction, that represent the revolution. Send 500 word abstracts via email (MSWORD files only) to Trisha Brady, SUNY at Buffalo, tmbrady@buffalo.edu.
The Space of Memory: How do writers capture and locate the capricious memory within river of time and space? How does collective memory interact with personal memory? How is memory perceived through senses, conceived, and reserved? How does the act of creative writing relate to the writers’ cultural, racial and personal past? How can memory be dead, alive or incarnated? This panel welcomes any theory in relation to space and memory, and the genres of film and literature as they relate to the themes of memory. Yu-Min Chen <yumchen@indiana.edu>
The Specter of Degeneration in 19th Century Literature: We invite papers analyzing degeneration in Western and non-Western works of, or portraying, the 19th century. What do fictions of degeneration tell us about the scientific, sexual and cultural politics of the 19th century? In what contexts is the fear of degeneration exacerbated or sublimated at the end of the century? How does contemporaneous biological theory become literature? Comparative approaches and papers dealing with 19th century popular literature welcomed. 400 word abstracts to Ana Oancea, aio2101@columbia.edu.
Unreliability as a Narrative Trope in Postcolonial Literature: This panel seeks papers that address the absence of reliable perspective as an aesthetic, ethical or political practice in postcolonial literature. Papers on postcolonial novels, memoirs, travel writing and comparative studies of postcolonial and Western texts are welcome. Please send inquiries or 250-300 word abstract in MS word document or PDF to sohineeroy@hotmail.com

Composition

Captions, Slogans, and Stares (Oh, My!): Image as Argument in College Writing (Roundtable): Seeking proposals of fewer than 500 words detailing your experience using images—including (but not limited to) cartoons, advertisements, and news photography—in first- or second-year writing classes. Of particular interest are proposals connecting image to argument, putting the image or images in the service of particular claims, to be evaluated or made. Peter Witkowsky, witkowsk@msmc.edu.
‘Community’ in Composition Instruction (Roundtable): In recent years, composition instructors have been tasked with introducing students to the discursive community, as well as promoting a sense of community in the composition classroom. But what standards define such “communities”: Academic? Professional? Creative? How does composition instruction serve to redefine these communities? How has this changed to reflect curricular mandates, student goals, and other realities? Please submit proposals (250 – 500 words as an MS Word attachment) to Maria Plochocki at bastet801@att.net
Leading Lines: Social Networking as Impetus for Scholarly Formation (Roundtable): News media are consistently commenting on the power of social networking sites, noting that the overwhelming majority of students spend significantly more time electronically communicating than devoting themselves to academic study. This roundtable seeks to foster discussion on how composition instruction can capitalize on students’ proficiencies in social networking as a transition into scholarly discourse in composition courses. Please submit inquiries or 250 word proposals and a brief biographical description to Kim.Ballerini@NCC.Edu.
Not Just Another ‘F’ Word: Reviewing and Renewing Feminist Writing Pedagogies (Roundtable): This roundtable investigates how the writing classroom informs our understanding of feminism. It seeks papers that address the lived experiences of feminist teachers and the pragmatics of feminist pedagogies. Papers that invite discussion about how feminist teachers and pedagogies can respond to the changing dynamics of the classroom and/ or the growing diversity of the student body are especially encouraged. Please submit 250-300 word abstracts to Christy Wenger at christy.wenger@lehigh.edu.
Writing Assessment Inside and Outside the English Department (Roundtable): What difficulties have writing teachers and writing program administrators encountered when it comes to assessment and communicating the results of assessment projects to English departments and beyond? How does position and location within the university affect the conduct and reception of assessment results? This roundtable particularly seeks panelists who have engaged in program-level writing assessment, and who hold positions outside of the English department faculty. Send 200-word description to Greg Barnhisel (barnhiselg@duq.edu).

Creative Writing

No CFPs are cross-listed in the Creative Writing area.

Experiments in Hybrid Essay (Creative): Hybrid essay questions scholarly writing as a successful means of expressing new thought and serves as a form of activism in academia to address questions of access to education, cultural context, class, race, gender, and assumptions about who is interested in these conversations. This panel calls for hybrid-genre papers on any subject that mix academic and literary language. Essays can experiment in critical analysis, storytelling, lyrical prose, performative text, theory and pop philosophy. Send abstract and a brief bio to sbs_lit@yahoo.com.
Poetry and the Academy (Roundtable): Many poets trained as literary critics before embarking on careers at universities, where they produce primarily creative work. This session explores the ways in which critical and scholarly discourses inform the writing of poetry. Panelists might read from (and comment on) their own poetry influenced by traditional research methods or theoretical paradigms. Alternatively, they might examine contemporary scholar-artists such as J.D. McClatchy and Gerald Locklin. Please send 250-word abstracts or three original, sample poems to njs16@psu.edu.
Quotation and Originality (Creative): In 1868, Emerson asked, ‘Is all literature eavesdropping?’ The recent upsurge in plagiarism charges returns writers to this debate, challenging notions of authenticity, originality, and ownership.This MLS session asks panelists to share their own ‘eavesdropping,’ explaining how such quotation informed a particular work of poetry or prose and investigating the ethical and artistic implications when writers mix and borrow. Send abstract with a 250-word excerpt of original poetry or prose, and a brief bio to Catherine Zobal Dent, dent@susqu.edu.

Cultural Studies and Film

British and Anglophone: “Arthurian Avatars: The King Arthur Myth from Medieval to Modern Times”; “Dracula and Beyond: The Evolution of the Vampire”; “‘I am born’: The Characters of Charles Dickens”; “Muriel Spark: Before, During and After The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie”; “Revisiting Easter 1916”; “Twentieth-Century Blake”; “Wilde Family Values”

Comparative Languages: “The Immortal Fairy Tale: Re-writings and Re-visions”

German: “Collecting in German Literature and Culture”; “Fatih Akin and his Films”; “German Romanticism and the Revolution in Science”; “Ventures into the Unknown: Literary and Cinematic Representation of City Spaces”

Italian: “Il Caso Saviano”; “Il folklore nel cinema e nella letteratura Italiana”; “Italian Media Socialization. Between Private, Public and On-line Narratives”; “Italy in WWII and the Transition to Democracy: Memory, Fiction, Histories”; “Italy’s 150th. Norms, Forms and Storms (and Some…Stress): from 1861 to WWI”; “Literature and the Arts: An Exemplary of Multicultural Understanding”; “Our Vietnam: Terrorism and Contemporary Italian Cinema”; “Popular Italian Cinema: from Ubalda to Er Monnezza”; “Post-National and Trans-National Italian Cinema”

Pedagogy: “Artistic Adventures: Introducing the Visual Arts in the XXI Century Classroom”

Russian/Eastern European: “Russian Representations of World War II”

Spanish/Portuguese: “Behind the Lens: Immigration and Globalization in Spanish Contemporary Film”; “The Performative City: Contemporary Spanish Urban Culture”; “Trauma and Memory in literature and film of Latin America”

Theory and Literary Criticism: “I See What You Say: Exploring Intersections of the Visual and the Literary”; “Medical Visions of Modernism”; “Posthumanism, Biopower, and Modern and Contemporary War”; “Rethinking the Postmodern Monster”; “Routes of Memory: Remapping Trauma Studies”

Transnational Literatures: “Bohemiens, Tsiganes, Gitanos, Roma: Representing the Margins”

Women’s and Gender Studies: “Classical Women in Modern Literature and Media”; “Donors and Helpers: Masculinity in Contemporary Fairy Tales”; “Feminist Alternative Media in the long 1970s”; “Gender & Healing: Utilizing Films for the Feminist Classroom”; “Narrating the Public Self: YouTube, Facebook, and Contemporary Feminism”; “We’re plotting our evil, feminist agenda: Women’s Documentaries”

Affects and Spaces in Latin American Cinema, Performance and Literature: This panel aims to discuss the relation between affect and spaces in contemporary Latin American cinema, performance and literature. New approaches to affect theory are most welcome, as are new approaches to space, particularly spaces across genres and beyond face-to-face relations. How are affects and spaces impacted by communication technologies and the growing intensification of cultural hybridization? Please send 300-500 word abstracts in English or Spanish and a brief bio by email to Valeria Garrote <vgarrote@eden.rutgers.edu>
Cinema and Demos: This panel seeks to question the relation between politics and cinema in terms of its effect on the masses. How is the relation between ideology and cinema established? What is the relation between cinema and the desire of the masses? What kind of cinema is a political one and what demarcates such attribution? How is nationalism and cinema related? How is it possible of thinking of feminist cinema today in terms of its affect on the masses?please send an abstract to Elif Sendur, esendur1@binghamton.edu
Concepts of Identity in Post-colonial African Culture: African writers and cultural artists view the phenomenon of independence in the post-colonial dispensation differently. Specifically, and with special reference to Anglophone, Francophone and Lusophone Africa, this panel aims to discuss how cultural agents have handled notions of identity, democracy, freedom, territoriality, progress, tradition and modernity within the broader contexts of race, gender, class and language. Submit proposal to Orquidea Ribeiro, Universidade de Tras-os-Montes e Alto Douro, oribeiro@utad.pt.
Constructing ‘Brazilian-ness’ through Cinematic Manipulations: How are contemporary works of Brazilian cinema utilizing filmmaking techniques to construct, deconstruct, redefine, question, or destabilize the notion of ‘Brazilian-ness?’ Any analysis of the construction of a Brazilian identity must recognize the problems inherent in such an effort. Papers will be accepted from all disciplines including film theory, Portuguese language studies, cultural studies, diasporic studies, etc. Abstracts accepted in English or Portuguese. Laurelann Porter <laurelannporter@yahoo.com>
Detective Fiction and Other Genres: Friends or Foes?: While detective fiction has historically been shaped by many influences, other genres, such as sci-fi, adventure, and Gothic, have, arguably, served to complicate and challenge it most. How do these intergeneric influences force a revisioning of the genre’s boundaries and identity? Case studies focusing on single works/ authors or broader generic overviews will be considered for this panel; please submit proposals (250 – 500 words as an MS Word attachment) to Maria Plochocki at bastet801@att.net
Environmentalism in the Realm of Science-Fiction and Fantasy: This panel will discuss the environmental and ecocritical themes found in works of science-fiction and fantasy literature. Through an analysis of these literary works, we look at how they address the environmental issues we face today. And, more importantly, we can look at the solutions that these present to ensure the sustainability of our natural world, and, in turn, for humanity. Please send abstracts of 250-300 words to: Chris Baratta, Binghamton University, cbaratt1@binghamton.edu
Experimentation in Latin American Film: Why does an artist step beyond the boundaries considered to be the safe parameters of production within her/his field? This panel aims to highlight Latin American films and film makers, both past and present, that exhibit experimental techniques in photography, narration, sound, editing or any other aspect of the film’s production that would expand the possibilities of the film’s critical interpretation. Christopher Donahue <cdonahue@bloomu.edu>
Figuring Diversity in the Cultural Imaginary: Abstracts about embodied difference in literature, film and video encouraged. Topics may include: cultural, racial, gendered, LGBTQ, physical and mental diversity. This panel will move beyond idealist aesthetics that prescribe and describe, to consider the methods of figuration in mainstream and subaltern narratives. How does an alternative aesthetics of corporeality impact the ways we interpret self and other? What are the differences across mediums and cultures? Please submit 250-300 word abstracts to E. Cherniak at ecernakova@gmail.com.
The Films of Kathryn Bigelow: This panel considers the films of Kathryn Bigelow, in particular, how-—if at all-—to situate Bigelow’s cinematic production within the context of feminist filmmaking. Please submit 250-500 word abstracts and a one-page CV to kathrynbigelownemla2011@gmail.com.
Housewives of Millennial Television: The recent TV obsession with (house)wives is a cultural phenomenon worth exploring. As traditional housewives have become increasingly rare in society, or renamed/transformed, first into homemakers, then “stay-at-home moms,” they seem to occupy a greater share of the popular cultural imagination. How can we understand this new TV phenomenon, in the light of the role ‘housewives’ have played in the cultural imagination? Historical, feminist, psychological, cultural studies approaches welcome. Abstracts: Katja Hawlitschka, khawlitschka@ocean.edu.
Immersions: Breaching Reality through Play: This panel will examine immersive fiction (e.g., live-action role-playing) and non-fictional immersion (e.g., reality shows), attending to tropes that “immerse” subjects, the boundaries of fiction and the cynical portrayal of the immersed subject in television, literature, film and journalism. Of particular interest are submissions dealing with such tropes outside of a U.S. context, within a cultural studies framework and/or against a backdrop of dramatic theory. Please send 300 word abstracts to Evan Torner (etorner@german.umass.edu).
Italian ‘famiglia’ Representations in Cinema and Television: In order to talk about Italy, one almost invariably must talk about family. This panel aims to focus on Italian family as a fluid, multi-layered theme in Italian and Italian-American cinema and television, and probe its various representations: traditional families, extended families, cross-national families, same gender families, adoptive families and all the different family figures that populate them. Please send 250-300 word abstracts to Francesco Pascuzzi, ciski77@eden.rutgers.edu.
Made in Spain: The Almodóvar Phenomenon: This panel seeks papers on the work of the Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar. What is it about him that connects so profoundly with spectators worldwide? How can we define this Almodovarian universe? Which ones are his main themes? How is Spain represented in his films? How does tradition play out in his films? What about genre? Proposals submissions and inquiries should be sent electronically. Languages accepted: English, French or Spanish (Microsoft Word, 250 words) Maria_Matz@uml.edu or Carole_Salmon@uml.edu
New Media and the Asian Diaspora: This panel will examine representations of Asian American and Asian diasporic communities in new media such as blogs, internet forums, social network sites, video games, etc. How do these representations deal with the heterogeneity of the Asian diaspora? How do online spaces develop, interrupt, or redefine transnational spaces? What do these representations tell us about the future of Asian American and Asian diasporic studies? Please submit 250-500 word abstracts to Swan Kim at SwanKim@virginia.edu.
The Other French Cinema(s) of the 1930s: This panel will examine aspects of 1930s French cinema situated outside the realm of “poetic realism” and/or any other generally accepted canonical films of the decade. The aim is not to challenge the icons of interwar filmmaking in France, but rather to open new paths to explore in a decade too often defined by their work. Please submit a 300-500 word abstract and a brief bio (English or French) to Colleen Kennedy-Karpat at kennedyc@eden.rutgers.edu and Bénédicte Lebéhot at blebehot@rci.rutgers.edu.
Reading the Postcolonial Other in Contemporary Film (Roundtable): Roundtable participants should examine one specific film (Hollywood, independent or international) and its methods used (thematic, cinematic, narrative) in treating the theme of postcolonial other. Preference will be given to under-represented and multi-language perspectives treating this topic in contemporary Africa, Americas, Australia/New Zealand, Europe, and South Asia films. 500 word abstract/CV to Sophie Lavin, SUNY Stony Brook: blavin@optonline.net.
Representations of Disability in Literature and Culture: This panel will investigate disability representation in contemporary popular culture, literature, film, and/or art. What can recent depictions of disability and disabled individuals suggest about our changing conceptions of physical difference and variability? Please submit abstracts to Sara Hosey <sara.hosey@ncc.edu>
Reshaping the Italian American Identity: The media’s (mis)portrayal in recent years of the current Italian American youth and adult population as ‘Sopranos’, ‘Guidos’ and ‘Guidettes’ (e.g. Jersey Shore) bear witness to the complexity of the process of re-shaping the pre-established Italian American identity. Please send 500-word abstracts and a brief biography to Arianna Fognani (fognani@eden.rutgers.edu).
Surplus Formulations in Detection Fiction: This panel will follow surplus presentations in detection, including polyphonic, psychological, cyber, or hybrid experiments that push the genre to a figurative edge. The call also seeks psychoanalytic studies of jouissance in detection including psychotic or unstable perspectives that elude investigation,i.e. Lisbeth Salander in Steig Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Finally the panel will also address anti- formations in detection. All proposals on this or related topics are welcome. Send to jdatema@bergen.edu.
Transnational Relations: Sexuality and Body Traffic across the Global Village: We will examine the ways in which cinematic, literary and journalistic texts represent the sexuality of undocumented workers across the global marketplace. What are the significant variations and distinctive asymmetries of power within such work, as manifest in different parts of the globe? In what ways are sexual identities altered or affected among undocumented laborers who do not engage in sex work? Abstracts of 300-500 words should be sent to Helga Druxes (hdruxes@williams.edu).
Understanding Avatar: A Movie Made for the Masses: Are the primitive yet “linked-in” Na’vi of Avatar the manifestation of a form of nature now dreamed about by modern “users” dependant on the Internet for their understanding of the world? Did James Cameron select obvious metaphors and recycled themes to ensure Avatar would be understood by bloggers and “textrs” no longer capable of subtlety or wit? Does the popularity of Avatar represent to the “erosion of language” prophesized by Sven Birkerts as a morbid symptom of the electronic age? Please submit 250-500 word abstracts to pchafe@ryerson.ca.
Visceral Subjects: Exploring Bodies, Exploring Knowledges: The past fifteen years have given birth to radically new technologies, new media, and new experiments in film and literature, for which we must develop original ways of thinking about knowledge. In particular, how does embodiment figure in this reevaluation of epistemology? How do our bodies interact with the new forms of knowledge and learning to which we are confronted? How do they help us understand our own viscerality? Please submit 250-word abstracts to Caroline Godart (godart@eden.rutgers.edu).
Wandering Women: Female Itinerancy on Film: This panel seeks to explore cinematic representations of female itinerancy: women as vagabonds, flaneurs, tramps, nomads, drifters, seekers, pilgrims, or picaros. What is the symbolic valence of such images? How have films reimagined literary, social, or historical tropes of female “wandering”? Please submit 250-500 word abstracts to Elizabeth Alsop at ealsop@gmail.com.
What a ‘Man’’s Gotta Do: (Re)Defining Duty in Post-Feminist Action Films (Seminar): The action film presents the ultimate arena for testing both commitment to society and personal integrity. This seminar is interested in papers that examine the qualities prized in these heroes--male or female--that enter these arenas, and the implications on contemporary definitions of American masculinity and/or femininity. Papers are accepted that look at individual films, as well as works of a particular director or actor. Submit 250-500 word abstract in body of email to Elizabeth Abele <abelee@ncc.edu>

French and Francophone

Canadian: “Gender and Labor in Contemporary French-Canadian Literature”

Comparative Languages: “The Specter of Degeneration in 19th Century Literature”

Cultural Studies and Film: “The Other French Cinema(s) of the 1930s”

Pedagogy: “Best Practices in Online Teaching: Language and Literature Courses”

Women’s and Gender Studies: “Transnational Women’s Writing in 20th-century Europe”

Arab Francophone Writers and the Arabo-Islamic Traditions: This panel seeks to explore Francophone literary works (poetry and prose)from the Arab world within the context of their engagement with the Arabo-Islamic traditions. Papers might address the influence of the Arabic literary tradition, Islamic intertextuality (Koran or Hadith), Sufism, Islamic history, or other aspects. Papers can be in English or French. Please send 250-word abstracts to Hanan Elsayed at hanan@rci.rutgers.edu
Belgitude: A Viable Concept for Contemporary Belgian Francophone Literature?: The concept of Belgitude allowed Belgian Francophone literature to come out of its nothingness at the end of the 20th century, but is it still a viable concept of identity that fits the contemporary generation of Belgian Francophone writers? Please send 300-500 word abstracts in French or English by email, with “Belgitude” as the subject heading, to Dr Jean-Frédéric Hennuy, Bennington College, Hennuy@Bennington.edu
The Complexity and Originality of Camus’s Writings: Camus was often considered an existentialist writer but the ideas he expressed and the way he expressed them are evidence of the fact that he transcended categories and could not be easily labeled. In this panel, we would like to explore and understand the complexity and originality of Camus’s work. We invite approaches that concentrate on the original aspects of his work to explore how and why Camus’s writings are still relevant for us today. Please submit 300-word abstracts in English or French to Emmanuelle.Vanborre@gordon.edu
Contemporary Female Playwrights in France: Sponsored by Women in French. Many of us restrict ‘women’s theatre’ in France to Sarraute, Duras and early Cixous. With names such as NDiaye, Réza, Mnouchkine and recent Cixous - to mention a few - there is presently wonderful activity from female playwrights at the moment - very little of which relates to more of the conventional themes of ‘women in theatre’ (such as voyeuristic traditions and female subjects within patriarchal representations). This panel aims to highlight these other voices. Natalie Edwards <natalie.edwards@wagner.edu>
Exploration of Senses in Contemporary Francophone Women’s Autobiography: Understanding that the sensory organs are the tools through which we interact with the world, the aim of this panel is to look at the roles of the senses in contemporary francophone women’s autobiography as a potential way to relearn and rethink fundamental aspects of women’s self construction and perception of the surrounding environment. In addition to sight and hearing, taste, smell and touch will be part of our investigation. Please send 250-300 word abstracts to Anna Rocca, Salem State College, at arocca@salemstate.edu
The Francophone African Intellectual: This panel will discuss the definitions and activities of the Francophone African intellectual, discussing such issues as the issues s/he engages, the fields s/he occupies, her/his residence and his/her relations with the State and the people. We will consider proposals defining this figure in the broadest terms, and his/her engagement across a wide field of culture, including literature, cinema and cultural criticism. Please send abstracts to Christopher Hogarth christopher.hogarth@wagner.edu.
Identité nationale dans le roman francophone contemporain: Ce panel vise à explorer les alternatives que la littérature francophone propose, au seuil du XXIème siècle, au schéma classique d’une conscience collective comme cheval de Troie de la résistance anti-impérialiste. Cette session se proposera en outre d’examiner les diverses représentations de l’identité nationale dans le roman francophone contemporain: mémoire, langue, corps, sexualités et migration. Faire parvenir les résumés de communication 200-300 mots en anglais ou en français avec une courte biographie - hebouche@buffalo.edu
J.M.G. Le Clézio: Un écrivain engagé?: This session will explore if Le Clézio should be considered ‘un écrivain engagé’ because of his commitment to defending marginalized and disenfranchised civilizations by giving them a voice. Although Le Clézio does not promote any specific political ideology in his works, the Franco-Mauritian author has always been a staunch ally to both ethnic and moral minorities that are exploited by the ruling majority. Does this deep sensibility not reflect a certain type of ‘engagement?’ Keith Moser, Mississippi State University <kam131@msstat>
Lectures postcoloniales de la Grande Guerre dans la littérature francophone du (Roundtable): Le postcolonial a ‘envahi’ la littérature francophone de ces dernières décennies. Or, un évènement tel que la Première guerre mondiale peut-il être « postcolonialisé » ? Quelles sont donc les modalités du traitement de la Première guerre mondiale en littérature, dans notre ère (post)-postcoloniale? Ainsi, le centre en est-il resté à la bravoure, la sauvagerie, la couleur locale? La périphérie fait-elle de la première guerre du siècle postcolonial un lieu d’affirmation identitaire? Corinne François-Denève, UVSQ, corinne.francois@uvsq.fr
Les enjeux du « je » en jeu dans la littérature francophone: Ce panel vise à explorer les enjeux de la mise en scène d’une identité et/ou d’une voix narrative instable et surnoise dans les romans des écrivaines francophones. En considérant les différentes ruses de la voix narrative,quels aspects de l’identité se compliquent tout en problématisant la lecture de ces histoires? Ce panel est soutenu par WIF (Women in French) et a été retenu par WIF pour le colloque de NeMLA. Veuillez envoyer des précis de 250 mots(en français ou en anglais)à Adrienne Angelo, Auburn University(ama0002@auburn.edu).
Love and Friendship in French and Francophone Women’s Fiction and Film: This panel seeks papers that explore the differences, similarities and conflicts between l’amour and l’amitie as expressed by writers and film-makers from France, Africa, Quebec and the Caribbean. Does friendship outlast romantic love? Does love separate friends leading to rivalry, jealousy and family feuds? Send abstract to Debra Popkin, Baruch College CUNY, DebraP26@aol.com
Manipulative Forewords: Authors’ Attempts to Impose Their Own Agenda in Preface: This panel will address the issue of text reception in older French literary texts (17th and 18th centuries) that were introduced by a preface from the author, and will raise the question of the final purpose of a preface. Please send an abstract in French or English to Dr. Sophie Raynard-Leroy, The State University of New York at Stony Brook, sophie.raynard@stonybrook.edu
Melting-Pots and Mosaics: Paris and Montréal in Francophone Literature: This panel will examine the role played by Paris and Montreal in the evolution of francophone identities. While some writers have depicted the alienation experienced by their protagonists, others have explored the emergence of interlope cities. How do these divergent approaches shape the evolving image of the two cities in francophone literatures? How do protagonists negociate the emergence of multiple migrant voices? Are Paris and Montreal changing from failed melting pots to diffracted mosaics? Pascale de Souza, GMU, pdesouza@gmu.edu
Postmodern French Literature: This panel seeks papers that discuss postmodern literary theory in the context of French and francophone literature. What are examples of postmodern works in French literature? Are there examples of modern French works being re-written in a postmodern manner? Suggested panel topics include: simulation, deconstruction, intertextuality, semiology, symbolism, phenomenology. Papers can be in either English or French. Send 300 word proposals to Melissa Panek, 38panek@cardinalmail.cua.edu.
Relire les ‘Classiques’ Africains Francophones: Ce panel propose une relecture des œuvres « classiques » de la première génération d’écrivains africains francophones, afin de redécouvrir la richesse de leurs textes fondateurs. Pour ce faire, il s’agira de se démarquer des thèmes manichéens et saturés de tradition contre modernité, colonisé contre colonisateur, etc., pour repenser ces textes par rapport à l’acte individuel d’écriture de leurs auteurs souvent enfermés par la critique dans la traduction de leurs traditions africaines collectives. Abstracts to pndip@yahoo.com
Rethinking Motherhood in French Literature and Film (Roundtable): This panel aims to compare texts that question, reformulate or reject the value of motherhood in contemporary society. Much has been written on the subject of motherhood since the feminist theoretical writings of the 1970s. This panel aims to examine literary texts and films that cast doubt upon formulations of motherhood by representing women who, for example, are bad mothers, who abort, who commit infanticide, who give their children up for adoption or who are voluntarily childless. Natalie Edwards <natalie.edwards@wagner.edu>
Seventeenth-Century French Writers’ Ideas, Philosophy, and Beliefs: This panel will focus on uncovering the ideas, philosophy, and beliefs of the seventeenth-century French writers. We will investigate their relationship with Cartesianism, Augustinism, and other ideologies along with rhetorical patterns such as the classical ideals of order, clarity, proportion, and good taste. Major seventeenth-century authors will include female and male moralists, poets, novelists, and playwrights. The method of analysis is open. Send abstracts (200-300 words) to Dr. Stéphane Natan, Rider University: snatan@rider.edu.
Teaching Content through French and Francophone Film (Roundtable): This roundtable seeks innovative strategies for the implementation of French and Francophone films as a means of teaching content (vocabulary/grammar/culture) in the French language classroom. Of particular interest would be presentations that share original theme-based units, lessons, or assignments that incorporate the teaching of French film(s). Please send 250-500 word abstracts to Katharine Harrington at: knharrington@yahoo.com
Transposing the Arts: This panel will explore the relationships that exist between literature and the fine arts in France and Germany during the 18th and 19th centuries. At what point does an interart exchange become a creative reworking rather than an analytic response? How does a literary text become music? How are paintings or examples of architecture transposed into novels, essays, or poems? What does it mean to ‘read’ music? Please submit 350-words abstract to Anamaria Banu (anabanu@rci.rutgers.edu) and Anna Bachman Barter (abachman@wisc.edu).
What is France? Ideology, Politics and Utopia in Early modern French Literature: What is France in the early modern period? Is it already possible to speak about a French entity, or is it still an utopia? Abstracts (in both French and English, 250-300 words) examining (but not limited to) fields such as the the place of the King, the definition of the geographic space, the religion, the idea of the language and/or literature as tools to define or fight the idea of France, should be sent to Charles-Louis Morand Métivier at chm58@pitt.edu. These abstracts must cover events or works up to the late 16th century

German

French and Francophone: “Transposing the Arts”

LGBTQ: “Queer Space(s) in the German-Speaking World”

Collecting in German Literature and Culture: This panel explores how objects acquire meaning by collocation. Possible topics include (but are not limited to) theories of collecting; collecting and the “archival impulse” (Hal Foster)/the cultural record; private vs. public collecting; the pathology of collecting; the collector’s item as commodity; the politics of collection strengths and collection gaps; the institutionalization of collections; and the physicality of memory. Please send 1-2 page abstracts to Regine_Heberlein@alumni.brown.edu and cagle@lycoming.edu.
Cultural and Political Dislocation and Reorientation in United Germany: This session will explore the sense of rupture or loss of identities, and the struggle to establish new identities after major historical and cultural upheavals following the fall of the Wall. Papers might address diverse experiences of social and intellectual dislocation, new approaches toward reorientation and integration, political and intellectual discourses, as well as the broad cultural spectrum of fiction and autobiography, film and essayistic writing. Send abstract to Barbara Mabee, Oakland University, mabee@oakland.edu
Eighteenth-Century Hierarchies: During the eighteenth century, established hierarchies, not only of social rank, but also of gender and literary genre, were called into question. At the same time, there is a tendency in literature of this period to reinstate these sorts of hierarchies. The panel will explore how various hierarchies are both maintained and dismantled in German literature of the eighteenth century. Please send 250-word abstracts to Eleanor ter Horst at eterhorst@clarion.edu.
Fatih Akin and his Films: Fatik Akin, the new Fassbinder of the German film, has directed numerous films that won national and international awards. What is special about his films? What issues do his films deal with? How can his films be used in German classes at various levels? This panel seeks papers that deal with any aspect of Fatih Akin’s most recent films. Please send a one-page abstract and a brief biographical statement to: Ingrid Zeller, Northwestern University; izeller@northwestern.edu
German Romanticism and the Revolution in Science: This panel seeks papers on German Romantic literary works and the revolution in science. Romanticism is usually viewed in opposition to the Enlightenment and the ideal of scientific objectivity, yet this rebellion occurred in tandem with the scientific and philosophical revolutions of the 19th century and their focus on a new science of living things where organism was seen as prior to mechanism. Please submit 250-500 word abstracts on scientific inventions, discoveries, debates to Christa Spreizer at christine.spreizer@qc.cuny.edu.
Herta Müller: Perspectives on the Winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature (Roundtable): This roundtable seeks papers on a variety of perspectives on, critical approaches to and thematic inquiries into the work of Herta Müller. Topics include but are not limited to modernist aesthetics and poetic innovation; texts and contexts; public reception; public persona; methodological approaches; the canon and Balkanization; relation to former-GDR dissident authors; critical scholarship; reading Müller alongside other authors; memory and trauma; autobiography and fiction. Send 300-500 word abstracts to Maria Grewe at msg52@caa.columbia.edu.
Hybrid Identities: Second Generation Immigrants (Austria, Germany, Switzerland): How do second generation immigrant authors process their own socialization and their heritage culture and language in narratives? What constitutes a hybrid identity in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland? How are their narratives different from main-stream texts and do these texts influence the literary discourse in the respective country? Send abstracts to Margrit Zinggeler at mzinggele@emich.edu.
Images of Eastern Europe in Recent German Literature and Film: This panel seeks papers on the representation of Eastern Europe in recent German literature and film. How have Eastern Europe and the East-West relationship been reevaluated as a result of unification, expansion of the European Union,globalization, and the events of 9/11? How has the new generation of writers and filmmakers overcome stereotypes and misrepresentations associated with Poland, Russia, and other Eastern European countries? Please send 250-word abstracts to Petra Fachinger, Queen’s University, petra.fachinger@queensu.ca.
Magic and Mechanics – Trends in Recent German Young Adult Fiction: This panel strives to examine dominating trends in recent German young adult fiction. Apart from sparkling vampires and diaries of wimpy kids, what are the stimulating topics and genres that engage German-speaking teenage readers? Possible topics: the re-imagining of literary classics; the intersection of YA fiction and comics; thematic innovations entering ‘mainstream’ novels (steampunk, queerness, intersections of videogames and YA novels).Please submit 250-500 word abstracts to Stefanie Kullick at stefanie.kullick@queensu.ca
‘Nationalism-with-a-big-N’ in German Historical Fiction of the Long 19th-Century: The genre of historical fiction is contradictory in nature—it is fiction grounded in fact, a product of both accuracy and illusion. This panel examines depictions of the nation in German historical novels of the long 19th-century. Welcome are abstracts that address the National in nineteenth-century German historical fiction and analyses of nationalism from the center (metropole) looking at the periphery (colonies or margins), from the periphery toward the center, and the state within the state. Diane Liu, Brown University, dliu22@gmail.com.
Rafik Schami - The Poet and Storyteller: Rafik Schami is the most well known, mostly read and studied of all writers and storytellers with a migration background living in Germany. His literary and non-literary works have been seen as a bridge between the “Morgenland” and the “Abendland,” as a contribution to „cross-cultural exchange and multicultural dialogue.“ Invited are papers that deal with any aspect of Schami’s literary works, especially his most recent works. Please send a one-page abstract to: Mohamed Esa, McDaniel College, mesa@mcdaniel.edu
Rap Music’s Sophisticated Dialogues with Society: This panel expands on the theme of dialogues within rap music to consider dialogues that rappers have had with members of dominant communities. How does the quality and nature of the dialogue work to elevate rap lyrics to the script of a viable debate partner? At what point does the language of the two groups converge when seeking to place the blame for social problems? Please submit a 200-500 word abstract to Lynn Marie Kutch at kutch@kutztown.edu.
Reading German Girls: This panel invites proposals that locate girlhood studies in a German Studies context. Particularly of interest are studies of how girl identity is constructed in and through literature and reading. Possible topics include girls’ reading circles, Backfischbücher, reading habits and concerns about “Lesewut,” online communities, and education. Also welcome are intersectional analyses and comparative approaches. Please send 300 word abstracts to Maureen Gallagher, University of Massachusetts-Amherst, mogallag@german.umass.edu.
Suddenness (Plötzlichkeit) and Literature: This panel examines the possibilities and limitations of suddenness as a concept in literary analysis and interpretation. It invites contributions on literary works and theories of time in literature or philosophy that bring the concept of suddenness into dialog with existing literary “time” theory (Weinrich, Bakhtin, Genette), “time” philosophy (Bergson, Husserl, Heidegger), and literary texts in narrative, drama, and poetry. Send 300-word abstracts in German or English to Thomas Herold (therold@fas.harvard.edu) by September 15, 2010.
Towards a Continuum of Language, Culture, Literature in Undergraduate German: The panel is interested in papers dealing with the integration of lower- and upper-level courses of college German programs. If German language and culture must be regarded as core competencies of a profession largely revolving around literary studies, is the language acquisition process treated with the programmatic respect it deserves? Program descriptions and experiences that give evidence of addressing the cultural and literary aspects are welcome. Abstracts to: Elke Nicolai, Hunter College, CUNY enicolai@hunter.cuny.edu
Transnational Genres in 18th Century German Literature: The 18th century German literary landscape is marked by increased cultural transfer via travel and translation. This panel seeks to explore the influence and/or impact of this transnational tendency on such genres as the bürgerliches Trauerspiel, the weinerliches Rührstück (comédie larmoyante), the Briefroman, Reiseliteratur and others, including poetry. Who are the agents pushing this transnational process, how important are gender considerations in this context? How does this process manifest in genre-specific terms? (weigerta@georgetown.edu)
Ventures into the Unknown: Literary and Cinematic Representation of City Spaces: We are seeking for a broad range of interpretations of the city in literature, cinema, and theory: Spatial theories by Michel de Certeau, M. Foucault, Marc Augé, H. Lefebvre, etc. Theoretical writings on city spaces by W. Benjamin, S. Kracauer, G. Simmel, etc. Literary texts relating to the city as memory, identity, as a literary genre, and as a utopia/dystopia(Kafka, W.G. Sebald, Leo Spitzer, T. Bernhard, Ulf Erdmann Ziegler, etc.). Send abstracts to: katrin_springer22@yahoo; ssivkoff@rci.rutgers.edu
Writing Surveillance: Transcultural Perspectives: The panel seeks to expand the current focus on GDR and post-unification narratives of Stasi surveillance to narratives from other socialist and post-socialist states. How do cultural and political circumstances allow for different surveillance discourses? How does a transcultural approach enhance our understanding of the problem, both as a universal phenomenon and in the GDR context? The panel welcomes contributions on the problem of surveillance and its legacy in German or other literatures. English or German abstracts: john.heath@univie.ac.at

Italian

Cultural Studies and Film: “Italian ‘famiglia’ Representations in Cinema and Television”

Italian: “Il ‘900 sommerso italiano”

Transnational Literatures: “The Art of Villainy: Machiavelli and the Creation of the Fictional Villain”

1861-2011: Reflecting on Italian Unification in Literature and Cinema (Roundtable): Italian identity, the Italian nation, Risorgimento, and Italian Unification have been issues widely debated in written literary works – novels or poems – and on the screen through films by Italian filmmakers. The roundtable seeks to investigate the meaning of the Italian nation and identity from the XIX to the XXI century to reflect critically upon 150 years of Italian history. Please send 150-200 word abstracts in English or in Italian to Chiara De Santi, SUNY Fredonia, chiara.desanti@fredonia.edu
Across Millennia: Italian Poetry in Limen: This panel will accept papers dealing with the poetry production in Italian published in the last 25 years. Aspects of interest are: the inference of media in poetry; the relationship (or lack thereof) between contemporary poetry and tradition; the attention of culture and publishers toward poetry; the concept of body and objectification; the survival of lyric poetry and consequent changes in the concept of language. In case of an adequate number of valid papers the panel will move to a round table. Please, email papers to: mabenass@yahoo.com.
Anna Maria Ortese: la passione della scrittura (Roundtable): The Roundtable welcomes scholars working on different aspects of Ortese’s oeuvre, analyzed from a variety of critical perspectives. Send abstracts to abaldi@rci.rutgers.edu
Booting the ‘Boot’: Teaching Contemporary Italy with Technology: This panel offers the opportunity to discuss projects focusing on the use of technology in teaching and learning Italian culture. Papers may be theoretical or descriptive. Topics could include: using technology to present cultural issues; technology as a tool for student research into culture; employing and managing technology to promote cross-cultural awareness inside and outside the classroom. Papers on blogs, chat rooms, podcasts, wikis, imovies, and social networks are welcome. Please send 250-word abstracts to Cristina_Abbona@brown.edu
Calvino and the city: new critical perspectives (Roundtable): In Italo Calvino’s fiction and non-fiction the city is an urgent theme. Experienced or imagined, cities are places of exploration and places of memory; journeys of speculation through smog or through crystalline utopia; stages on which the everyday merveilleux parades; spaces of confrontation with alterities that question our beliefs. This roundtable invites original interdisciplinary explorations on the city in Calvino’s oeuvre. Send proposals for 5-7 minute interventions to Letizia Modena, Villanova University, letizia.modena@villanova.edu
Charting the Circulation of Italian Culture, 1660-1800: This panel seeks papers on the movement of cultural material during the long eighteenth century, with a focus on Italian culture. We will be investigating the production/ circulation of Italian art and literature beyond limits of language and nationality. Please send 300-500 word abstracts and brief biographical statements to Matthew Rusnak rusnakm@rci.rutgers.edu.
Corporeality: Italian Literary Bodies of the XX and XXI Centuries:: This panel examines the body as literary corpus and/or as representation in literature. That which concerns us is the “topic of the body, its mediatization, its modification, and even its disappearance” (G. P. Renello) in a post-human society. Is identity in the body or elsewhere? Is the body itself ‘textual’? Please submit 250-400 word abstracts (in English or Italian) about the representation of the body in modern or contemporary Italian literature to Gregory Pell at gregory.pell@hofstra.edu.
Dante’s Journey to God. Spiritual Poetics in the Divine Comedy: This panel seeks to investigate the interaction of poetry and spirituality in Dante’s Divine Comedy. Papers should focus on issues of poetics highlighting the spiritual matrix of the text. Contributions dealing with more general issues of poetics will also be considered. Organizer Alessandro Vettori, vettori@rci.rutgers.edu
Defining Society: Representations of Food in Italian Literature and Culture: In this panel the socio-political and literary implications of food will be discussed in the ambient of Italian literature and culture. It will be open to all centuries and genres and may focus on the alimentary necessity for subsistence on the individual or social level, as well as food as a tool for societal and political definition, or as a medium for art. Please send a 300-400 word abstract to ddefeo@rci.rutgers.edu
Didattica 2.0: Teaching Italian With a Web 2.0 perspective: The goal of this session is to present some of the most innovative practices to teach Italian using the Web 2.0 technologies and tools. Panelists should talk about their experiences and case studies about the use of forum, chat, blog, social network, VOIP, wiki. Other experiences could be examinated and would be welcome. Send 250-500 word abstracts to giglio.alessandra@gmail.com
Diseased Imaginations: Illness in Modern Italian Fantastic Fiction: This panel will investigate the role that illness (whether physical or mental) plays in modern and contemporary Italian fantastic fiction. Contributions might address the influence of medical advances on the fantastic imagination, distrust of the medical system and its bureaucracy, disease as metaphor in gothic tales, the ailing human body as uncanny, the fear of contagion, etc. Papers discussing theoretical approaches are encouraged. Email 250-word abstracts (in Italian or English) to Amelia Moser, amelia.moser@gmail.com or moser@bard.edu.
Early Italian Literature: Text within Its Material Context: This session seeks to explore any aspects of Italian medieval and early modern texts within their material contexts (including, but not limited to manuscripts and printed editions). Send abstracts to Jelena Todorovic, email: jtodorovic@wisc.edu.
The Ecogothic in Italian Literature and Culture: The fear of disintegrating species boundaries has engendered panicked visions of the human, natural, and animal worlds that manifest themselves vividly in Gothic literature of the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries. This panel addresses the Gothic and allegories of monstrosity in Italian literature and culture, especially as they intersect with issues of ecocritical concern, such as species identity, food, nature, and consumption. Send one-page abstract by e-mail to: David Del Principe, delprinciped@mail.montclair.edu
Fashion and Costume as Mirrors of Society and Time in Italian Literature/Cinema (Roundtable): Fashion is intended as code of communication and mode of expression. It changes significantly along the years leaving behind an unquestionable trademark which helps identify the historical, social and political background. This topic can be studied in relation to all periods of Italian literature and Art as well Cinema. Send a 250 word abstract to Daniela Antonucci <daniela.antonucci@gmail.com>
Fra parola e immagine: (ri)scritture umanistiche: Il panel riflette sui canoni di una solida tradizione erudita, rinnovata però dalla sicura conoscenza di una cultura letteraria, storiografica, filosofica, teologica, filologica, sulla cui ‘fortuna’ riflettono gli intellettuali umanistiti. Il panel prende in esame interventi paratestuali, documenti, lettere, commenti, immagini, traduzioni che additano l’intrinseca connessione fra lo sviluppo del metodo filologico e la figura dell’umanista. Abstracts a Roberta Ricci: rricci@brynmawr.edu
From Cavour to Berlusconi: 150 Years of Italian History in Cinema: Retelling history through the written word is the usual format for interpreting events or understanding society, but when motion pictures are put to the service of decoding them, readers are transformed into spectators who are directly drawn into the events (re-)produced on the screen. The panel seeks to investigate history and society from the Italian unification onward in the light of cinema. Please send 200-300 word abstracts in English or in Italian to Chiara De Santi, SUNY Fredonia, chiara.desanti@fredonia.edu
Futurism and Science: This panel will explore the impact of the new sciences and technology on Futurism. Papers may focus on single authors or on specific groups, either in Italy or in other countries. Please send 300-400 word abstracts, biographical notes and requests for special equipment to Paola Sica (psica@conncoll.edu).
Guido Cavalcanti and His Legacy: Guido Cavalcanti’s Rime represent a major intellectual and rhetorical achievement. Cavalcanti claims that the individual soul is defined by the operations of the senses, but has no access to abstractions. The Italian tradition apparently dismissed his claim to follow, instead, the ‘spiritual’ dimension shaped by Dante’s Paradiso and by Petrarch. This panel seeks papers that can identify authors who incorporate Cavalcanti’s material into their works, and outline a tradition of matter yet to be fully discovered.Abstracts to anichini@tcnj.edu
Homosexual Women in Italian Literature, Cinema and other Media: Expressions of female homosexuality have only recently begun to enter the mainstream of Italian writing and culture. Following last year’s extremely successful sessions, this panel reviews selected topics addressing the past, present or likely future of all or any lesbian depictions or expressions in various Italian media, and may focus on their literary, sociological, erotic or other implications. Please send enquiries or abstracts to Erika Papagni erikapapagni@gmail.com
Human Rights in the Italian Theatre: Trenta sono gli articoli di cui si compone la Dichiarazione Universale dei Diritti Umani adottata dall’Onu nel 1948. Ma in una società dilaniata dalle violazioni di tali diritti, cosa fa e cosa può fare il Teatro? Come può provocare e agire? Questa sessione offre l’occasione di esplorare il ruolo del teatro in riferimento al tema sempre più urgente della denuncia e della difesa dei diritti umani nella nostra società e in quella internazionale. Please send 250-word abstracts in English or Italian to annacafaro@hotmail.com.
Il ‘900 sommerso italiano: This panel wants to analyze all those forgotten authors from the XX century Italian literature who, though they managed to publish at least one work, didn’t get the public recognition they deserved. Particular attention will be given to those writers who for biographical reasons were denied better and wider success. Papers are welcome in English and Italian. Please send a 250-word abstract to Alessandro Cavalieri, Universita’ di Genova, mail: samigli@hotmail.com
Il Caso Saviano (Roundtable): Roberto Saviano is currently one of the most famous and read Italian. This round table wants to explore the figure and the works of Saviano. Papers in English and/or in Italian on his books, on his journalistic works, on his collaboration with cinema, theater and TV are welcome. Interdisciplinary and innovative approaches will be well accepted. All the papers will be considered for a publication dedicated to “Il caso Saviano.” Samuel Ghelli, York College / CUNY, sghelli@york.cuny.edu
Il folklore nel cinema e nella letteratura Italiana: This panel seeks papers that investigate and elaborate how folklore entered into Italian literature and movies: how it is presented and used by the authors. Is addressed to a specific genre or public? Where can we find folklore in Italian literature and film? How is it used in children’s literature and in other literary mediums? Can folklore validate or explain cultural aspects of a country? Does it help to incorporate morals and values into a society? Please send an abstract of 150-200 words in Italian or in English to egrianti@gmail.com
‘Il sentimento del contrario’: l’Umorismo nella Letteratura Italiana: A partire dalla definizione del concetto di ‘Umorismo,’ data da Pirandello, la sessione si propone di individuare e discutere le opere umoristiche di autori italiani piu` o meno noti. Quali sono gli scrittori in grado di riconoscere ‘i lati dolorosi della gioja e i lati risibili del dolore umano’ e quali le strategie da loro utilizzate? Please send 250-word abstracts in English or Italian to martina.di_florio_gula@uconn.edu
Immagine e Forma nell’ Estetica Barocca: This panel invites proposals for interdisciplinary papers focusing on the re-examination of the Baroque Aesthetics. The renewed interest in the ‘emblemistica’ and renovated interpretation of metaphor, along with the new sensibility inspired by the scientific discoveries of the 17th century, contributed to the development and re-thinking of the concepts of ‘immagine’ and ‘forma’ that have been at the center of a lively debate ever since. Please send 500-word abstracts and a brief biography to Marino Forlino (mforlino@eden.rutgers.edu).
Is There an Italian-American Novel?: A dispute still exists as to whether there really is an “Italian-American novel,” seeing it as simply a variation within the American novel tradition. Those who believe that it does exist point to its beginning in the early ‘20s, holding that these novels reveal a sub-discourse, which deserves exploration within Italian language studies. The session welcomes papers that help to reach conclusions on this novelistic tradition. Paul Whitehill and Vincenzo Bollettino <paulwhitehill@yahoo.com>
Islam in Contemporary Italy: Increased immigration to Italy in the last decades has brought with it both demographic and cultural change. Immigrant communities are reshaping the social landscape of the peninsula and introducing new traditions that challenge the notion of a homogeneous Italian culture. This session aims to look at the growing Muslim community in particular, and the ways in which literature, film, theater and media perceive Islam and the Islamic world in Italy. Please send 250 word abstracts and short bios to Johanna Rossi Wagner at jrwagner@rutgers.edu.
Italian and Anglo-American Literature: A Dialogue through Translation: This panel intends to explore the various facets of translation of Italian and Anglo-American literature from all time periods. Topics can include the representation of Italian and Anglo-American literature, culture and civilization through translations, mis-translations and re-translations, and specific issues in translating Italian literature into English and Anglo-American literature into Italian. Presentations may be in Italian or English. Please e-mail 250-word abstracts to Marella Feltrin-Morris, Ithaca College, mfeltrinmorris@ithaca.edu
Italian Media Socialization. Between Private, Public and On-line Narratives: And how much the communication process is strongly connected with social and modernity changes? Papers addressing the role of social media (Twitter, Facebook, wikis, blogs, tags and more) in communicating, researching, analyzing, and writing in Italy are welcome. Presenters may discuss specific applications, case-studies, or general theories about online communication, collaboration and research. Please send your 500 word abstract to sonia.massari@gmail.com
Italy in WWII and the Transition to Democracy: Memory, Fiction, Histories: The fall of the Fascist regime and the birth of the Republic still represent today a ground of contrasting political and ideological narratives. Italy’s intervention in the war and the Liberation is a problematic terrain where private memories do not integrate with historical interpretations, where literary and cinematic re-enactments do not match political narratives. This panel seeks multidisciplinary contributions investigating representations of the period. Please send 300 words abstracts in English or Italian to Franco Baldasso, fb591@nyu.
Italy’s 150th. Norms, Forms and Storms (and Some…Stress): from 1861 to WWI: This panel examines the relation(s) between the developing ‘questione sociale’ and the evolving ‘questione nazionale’ in the aftermath of the Risorgimento, and therefore the new forms of nationalism that were developing prior to the rise of fascism, the new forms of regionalism, as exemplified in their linguistic and literary correlatives, from the ‘Scapigliatura’ to the rise of ‘verismo’ and the various forms of Italian ‘decadentismo’ and experimentation that took place up to the birth of the first ‘avanguardie.’ <mwepstein@verizon.net>
L’Altro Tasso: A Discussion of Tasso’s ‘Not-So-Minor’ Works (Seminar): This seminar will discuss Torquato Tasso’s less-studied, so-called ‘Minor’ works such as his Dialoghi, his literary-theoretical writings, his plays, his letters and the Gerusalemme Conquistata (among many others). Papers are welcomed on a variety of topics which examine these works and help situate them within the broader context(s) of Italian (and European) Literature(s), Literary Criticism and Intellectual History. Please send 250-300 word abstracts and biographical statements (in English or Italian) to bryan.brazeau@nyu.edu.
Language(s) and Politics in/of Italian Theatre: This panel focuses on the verbal as well as non-verbal languages Italian playwrights and librettists in the past five centuries have used to comment on the politics of their time. Directorial choices in the XX and XXI centuries have made relevant past political concerns. Papers that show the relationship between text, staging, and politics in theatre and opera are welcome. Please send a 200-word abstract to Gloria Pastorino <gloria.pastorino@gmail.com> and include: name, affiliation, and short bio.
Literature and the Arts: An Exemplary of Multicultural Understanding: The panel welcomes interdisciplinary papers (in both Italian and English) that consider the interplay between two or more of the following: literature, music, theater, cinema and the visual arts. Please submita 300-word abstract and the related bibliography to Marco Cerocchi, La Salle University, email: cerocchi@lasalle.edu
Migrant Writers: New Frontiers in Contemporary Italian Literature: This panel invites papers that aim to the discussion of issues of diasporic and in-between identities in Italophone writings. Suggested topics include but are not limited to: Questions of identity and belonging/home; Otherness/sameness; Memory of the past; Language. Please send 200-300 word abstracts in English or in Italian to Giusy Di Filippo, University of Wisconsin-Madison <difilippo@wisc.edu>
Misteri di carta: il Giallo Italiano oltre la letteratura di genere: One of the characteristics of the ‘giallo italiano’ is that it occupies spaces concerning the ‘highbrow’ literature . Gadda, Sciascia, Tabucchi, Eco are examples of this tendency. Today many writers (Camilleri, Lucarelli, Carlotto, Fois) achieved a great success, renewing the genre and contaminating it with sociological or postmodernist elements. Papers – in Italian or in English – on any aspect of Italian detective story are eligible. Submit 250 word-abstracts, via e-mail to Andrea Pera, andrea.pera@hotmail.it
Narratives by and about Migrants in Italy’s New ‘Multiculturalism’: This panel explores new migrant voices in Italy using a range of narrative forms, from oral narratives in Italian immigration movies and in conversational discourse to literary narratives in texts. The purpose of the session is to use these narratives as a window onto Italy’s new multiculturalisms. These discursive artifacts are considered as fragments of large-scale debates over cultural difference that take place in various media such as Italian cinema. Papers from all disciplines are welcome. Send abstracts sperrino@umich.edu
New Trends in Teaching Italian with Technologies: The goal of this panel is to present some of the most innovative methodologies available today in teaching Italian language and culture by integrating technology. The panelists should exemplify those practices they have found in their experience to be the most useful and effective. Papers that will also address strategies related to interaction, execution, infrastructure, course design, implementation of material, and tools for self-assessment are also welcome. Send 250-500 word abstracts to: Antonella Ansani, QCC-CUNY, aansani@qcc.cuny.edu
Our Vietnam: Terrorism and Contemporary Italian Cinema (Roundtable): The roundtable explores a recurrent tendency in contemporary Italian cinema to represent the traumatic past of ‘anni di piombo’ and the political violence that characterized them. The roundtable will examine the historiographical need of recent Italian cinema to deal with an uncomfortable past that has been defined as ‘our Vietnam.’ Chiara Ferrari <cfferrari@csuchico.edu>
Petrarch, Petrarchism and Beyond: This panel welcomes papers on Petrarch, but especially those focusing on Petrarch’s influence in Italian literature and beyond. Topics can include, but are not limited to, Petrarch’s influence on Italian authors (i.e. Boiardo, Poliziano, Bembo, Gaspara Stampa, Foscolo, Leopardi, Ungaretti); however, papers on foreign authors (i.e. Chaucer, Góngora, Camões, Shakespeare) will also be considered. Papers should be in English or Italian. Send a 300-word abstract to James McMenamin at jfmcmenamin@gmail.com.
Popular Italian Cinema: from Ubalda to Er Monnezza (Roundtable): After Neorealism’s peak, Italian cinema developed, in addition to internationally acclaimed art films, a widely popular commercial cinema. The Italian film industry always oscillated between films focused on popular entertainment and directors trying to deal with of authorship in mainstream cinema. Given a renewed interest of producers and academics in popular cinema, this roundtable investigates the evolution and the repositioning of the genre framework within the Italian film industry. Abstracts to: orsitto@gmail.com or forsitto@csuchico.edu
Post-National and Trans-National Italian Cinema: After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Italian films have started to exceed the previously privileged space of the nation, in order to explore the transnational sites where cultures intertwine and crisscross. Recording the complexities of a renewed socio-political and cultural context, contemporary Italian cinema is marked by an ever growing process of investigation, problematization, and negotiation of national identities and communities. This session focuses on films of the last two decades. Abstracts: orsitto@gmail.com or forsitto@csuchico.edu.
Representations of Dante’s Inferno in the Visual Arts and in Literature: This panel focuses on the reception of the Dantesque Inferno from the perspective of figurative representation, as presented in the literary and cultural realms throughout the centuries since the poem’s inception. The topics of the panel include, but are not limited to: comparative studies of the Inferno illustrations; graphic novels pictures, paintings and architecture works related to Dante’s Inferno. Send 250-300 word abstracts to Giovanni Spani (gspani@holycross.edu)
Representations of the Self in the Italian Middle Ages: This panel seeks papers discussing the idea and representation of the self and the representation of an author’s own life in various ways: either as an exemplum for the posterity, as a confessional excusatio, as the affirmation of the lyrical “I” of the poet. This panel should lead to discussion about of self-confession and self-representation, debate on the meaning of what Rico called sub specie autobiographiae in the Middle Ages, and attempts to answer Zumthor’s title question, Autobiographie au Moyen Age? Roberto Pesce <ropesce@gmail.com>
Representations of Women and War in 20th Century Italian Literature and Film: This panel will explore various representations of Italian female experiences of war in the twentieth century and seeks to promote a dialogue and bring into discussion how war is experienced by women, and how women and their participation are represented, or misrepresented in filmic, literary, and historical texts. Papers on all aspects of women and war in the twentieth century are encouraged. Please send abstracts (250-500 words, MSWord or PDF attachments) to drlevy1@gmail.com
Representing the City in Italian Modernity: The panel welcomes papers on the representation of urban space in Italian culture, in the late 19th-early 20th centuries, in different media and genres, from a variety of theoretical perspectives. Send abstracts to abaldi@rci.rutgers.edu
Revolutionary Theater: This panel invites proposals that discuss the role of political theater in Italian culture in the 20th and 21st century, though papers from other time periods will be considered. How have different historical situations influenced the type of theater that was performed? What was the reception at the time of the performances? Have some methods or styles remained consistent through the ages? What is the influence of the media? Please send a 250 word abstract to Mary Ann Mastrolia, mmastrol@eden.rutgers.edu
Something Old, New, Borrowed, True: Italian Literature from ‘900 to Present: This panel analyzes Italian literature from the early Novecento to the most recent publications and authors, taking into special consideration, but not being limited to, foreign influence on Italian works and those writers who have been accused, correctly or not, of plagiarism. All genres (novel, poetry, short stories, etc) are welcome. Papers are accepted in English and/or Italian. Please send a 250-word abstract to Giovanni Migliara, U.N.E.D. University of Madrid at galiba@hotmail.com
Thinking (of) Women in the Italian Renaissance: This panel seeks papers on the place of women in the Italian Renaissance, in literary representations, as participants in the construction of the female, or as part of material culture. This panel seeks to illuminate the variety of female representations in this period in answer to the question: where are the women in the Italian Renaissance? Submit abstracts to Maryann Tebben, Bard College at Simon’s Rock, mtebben@simons-rock.edu.
Traveling in and out of Italy: The panel seeks to address the experience of Italian travelers both in Italy and/or outside. Papers should explore the various interpretive difficulties posed by travel-writing (travel accounts, guidebooks, diaries and letters), the relation between travel and writing, and/or the comparison of the experience in Italy and in foreign countries. Papers in Italian or English are welcome. Send a brief abstract to: eocchipi@drew.edu
Twentieth-Century Italian Lyrical Landscape: La sessione si propone di discutere alcune delle principali e piu’ significative espressioni poetiche del ventesimo secolo, approfondendo tematiche di carattere esistenziale, filosofico, politico e sociale. Si accettano anche proposte su manifestazioni poetiche contemporane. Contributors may send a 200-word proposal to: laura.baffoni-licata@tufts.edu
‘Voglio morire’: Suicide in Italian Literature of the XIX and XX Centuries: The panel seeks to investigate the theme of suicide in Italian literature of the XIX and XX centuries. Many authors personally commit suicide, or consider doing so, or represent a character’s suicide in their works. The focus is not on single biographical motivations, but rather on the significance and manifestation of suicide within Italian literature. Please send abstracts of 250-300 words (in English or Italian) to Anita Virga, University of Connecticut, anita.virga@uconn.edu
Writing and Screening Images of Men. Masculinities in Italian Studies: The objective of the present panel will be to examine authors who contributed to produce (and reproduce) the image of Italian masculinity, how such an image has been created, imagined, constructed, de-constructed, and contested through literature and cinema. Send abstracts to Renato Ventura: ventura.renato@gmail.com
Writing the Self: Italian Women Autobiography: This panel welcomes papers dealing with theoretical issues or analyzing aspects and themes pertinent to the autobiographical genre (i.e. memory, identity, experience) in one or more Italian female authors, as well as works considered particularly controversial as they are at the border between the autobiographical genre and fiction (i.e. ‘Cosima’ by Grazia Deledda). Please send a 250-300 word proposal in Italian or English to Ioana Larco at: ilarco@indiana.edu

LGBTQ

British and Anglophone: “Drag, Dress & Disguise in Eighteenth-Century Novels”

Spanish/Portuguese: “Body and the Politics of Resistance in the 21st century Latin American Narrative”; “Long Life Movida Madrileña!”

Theory and Literary Criticism: “Articulating the Human and its Others”; “Serial Narratives and Temporality”

Women’s and Gender Studies: “Advancing Gender Equality”

LGBTQ Identities in Latin America: This panel seeks to explore representations of LGBTQ literatures and identities in Latin America. For example, how do “sexual deviants” challenge ossified and monolithic notions of masculinity/femininity, national identities, and other hegemonic discourses? Is there a relationship between subversive sexuality and politics? Send a short abstract and brief biographical statements to Dr. Rick J. Santos at <santosr@ncc.edu). Use NeMLA-2011 in the heading.
LGBTQ Studies and Pedagogy (Roundtable): This roundtable session will focus issues of pedagogy and LGBTQ Studies. We invite submission of proposals for 5-10-minute presentations on any issue relating to teaching LGBTQ literatures. For example, the inclusion LGBTQ literature in traditional settings, the relationship between LGBTQ theories/literatures and progressive politics, challenging/successful issues. Send proposals to Dr. Rick J. Santos at <santosr@ncc.edu>. Please, write PEDAGOGY PROPOSAL in the subject heading.
Narrating Queer Histories (Roundtable): This roundtable invites a discussion of how our queer histories are narrated, documented, archived, and preserved. How does narrative encapsulate histories of queer identity, organizing, and survival? How do queer histories inform current conceptions of community, embodiment, and political practice? Topics might include: HIV/AIDS, transgender activism, prisoner rights, housing, employment, art, gender, women, police brutality, racism, borders, migration, and queer responses to popular culture. Please send abstracts to: martyfink@gmail.com
Prove It On Me: Ambivalent Lesbian Representation in the Harlem Renaissance: The Harlem Renaissance tried to fill absences in African-Americans’ group identity—humanity, art, masculinity, morality—by creating a respectable black middle class. Bourgeois imperatives complicated queer existence by enforcing heteronormativity. This panel explores representations, direct or ambivalent, of African-American lesbian desire and resistance in the arts and literature of the Harlem Renaissance and the contemporary queer renaissance. Please send 300-500 word abstracts to Phillip Zapkin, pzapkin@uvm.edu.
Queer Counterpublic: This panel welcomes papers on queer counterpublics including LGBTQ, drag, bdsm, fetish, butch/femme, polyamory, etc., in literature, film, and culture; the subversion of the hegemonic order of sex, sexuality, gender, desire, and bodies; alternative discursive, symbolic, imaginary, or literal locations for queer behaviors, bodies, and identities; and the role of consumer culture in the production of queer counterpublics. Submit to gsikorski@aacc.edu
Queer Space(s) in the German-Speaking World: This panel invites papers that deal with discourses of queer space in the German-speaking world, as well as representations of LGBT space(s) in German-language literature and visual culture. Papers might look at the sites of rural queerness; public and private tensions within queer space; virtual space; queer buildings, institutions, and monuments; and gay neighborhoods; those that look beyond Berlin are especially welcome. Send 200-300 word abstracts to Yvonne Ivory, University of South Carolina yivory@sc.edu .
(Re)Imagining Expatriates: Queer Transnationalisms in American Literature: Monique Truong’s recent novel linked Gertrude Stein’s internationalism with that of her Vietnamese cook Binh, underlining the crucial role transnationalisms have played in LGBTQ experience. How do various forms of border crossing, from James’s cosmopolitans to Lorde’s Caribbean immigrants, shape representations of sexuality in American literature? Papers on any historical period are welcome, as well as studies of queer expatriates, exiles, travelers, or immigrants. Send abstracts of 300-500 words to Paul Fisher at pfisher@wellesley.edu.

Pedagogy

Composition: “Captions, Slogans, and Stares (Oh, My!): Image as Argument in College Writing”; “‘Community’ in Composition Instruction”; “Leading Lines: Social Networking as Impetus for Scholarly Formation”; “Writing Assessment Inside and Outside the English Department”

Italian: “Didattica 2.0: Teaching Italian With a Web 2.0 perspective”; “New Trends in Teaching Italian with Technologies”

LGBTQ: “LGBTQ Studies and Pedagogy”

Professional: “College ‘Dropouts’: Teachers’ Journeys From the Ivory Tower to the Trenches”

Transnational Literatures: “Censored Literature”; “Intersections of language and culture: Sprachgemisch, métissage & code-switching”; “World Literature/Global Empathy”

World Literatures (non-European Languages): “Arabic Studies: Challenges and Successes”; “Teaching Culture of Less-Commonly Taught Languages”

Artistic Adventures: Introducing the Visual Arts in the XXI Century Classroom: This panel explores the use of fine arts, photography, and short films (‘cortometrajes’) in the foreign language classroom. We welcome papers that explore the ways in which the use of the visual arts enrich and enhance the learning process by providing students with cultural, historical and political materials through the arts. Please submit your electronic proposals to either Chair of this Panel: Dr. Margarita Sanchez or Dr. Katica Urbanc; msanchez@wagner.edu / kurbanc@wagner.edu
Best Practices in Online Teaching: Language and Literature Courses (Roundtable): During this roundtable, we will discuss innovative teaching strategies in online language and literature courses. We will especially focus on the current trend towards online beginning language courses. Whether you are a skeptic, an “early adopter,” or a seasoned online teacher, we welcome your story as we explore the challenges and successes of online teaching in language and literature courses. Send your 250-300 word abstract and copy of a recent CV to: Chelsea Ray @ chelsea.d.ray@maine.edu.
Connecting Language and Literature: Standards-Based Instruction in Higher Ed. (Roundtable): This round table will provide a forum for discussion of the importance of incorporating national standards into the second-language college classroom. We will familiarize the audience with the national standards and explain how they can be used to develop effective articulation between elementary language classes and upper level literature and civilization classes. Karen Hess de Sanchez, khsanchez@gmail.com
The Future of Open Content Education is Now: Social Learning and Scholarship: The increasing popularity of Web 2.0 technologies and future trends as enlisted in “The Horizon Reports” has created a continuous need to evaluate and rethink their application and methodologies. This panel invites papers that address key issues in the use of technology in the classroom, such as: project-specific course design and outcomes, collaboration (academic, cross-institutional and external), assessment and scholarship credit, and mobile devices delivery, etc. Please send 250-word abstracts to Andrés Villagrá avillagra@pace.edu
Getting to Advanced Low: Preparation for the Oral Proficiency Interview: The purpose of this panel is to present the challenges of institutions suddenly faced with student preparation for the Oral Proficiency Interview and to examine specific practices and implementations. Studies on oral proficiency testing and efficacy of the test will be included in the panel presentations and discussion, as well as personal experience and case studies in the advancement of student oral proficiency. Please email 250-500 word abstract to Mirta Barrea-Marlys at mbarrea@monmouth.edu.
Problem Based Learning: Strategies, Struggles, and Successes (Roundtable): Problem Based Learning (PBL) devises challenging, open-ended problems for students to solve collaboratively. How do we define and configure PBL, which originated in the sciences, for classes in the humanities? This roundtable session invites participants to share strategies, struggles and successes using PBL in literature classes. Please send abstracts of 500-700 words to Karen Stein, University of Rhode Island, karen.whd@gmail.com.
(Re)Teaching the Spanish Classics: Integrating Technology, the Web, and Film (Roundtable): The purpose of this roundtable is to explore and share current approaches to teaching the classics of Spanish Medieval and Golden Age literature (ex. Don Quixote, La Celestina). This session will focus on the resources and methodologies that make these literary works more authentic to the student. A critical examination of websites/films and their value in the classic literature classroom will be included. Please send a 250-500 word abstract to Mirta Barrea-Marlys, Monmouth University, mbarrea@monmouth.edu.
Rethinking Teaching in Lean Times (Roundtable): Hiring is frozen. Lines are going unfilled. As budgets shrink, the challenges of teaching in a lean economy are all too clear and present. But times of financial crisis are also times of opportunity. This roundtable solicits proposals for new ideas, approaches, methods, assignments that seek to shift the conversation from “how can we continue to teach the same way with a shrinking budget?” to “in these lean times, how can we teach in new, more effective ways?” Please send 250-word abstracts to Steve Canaday <sbcanaday@aacc.edu>.
Teaching Translation in the 21st Century (Roundtable): The goal of this roundtable is to discuss the manifold functions of translation in the classroom, both as a resource and as the main focus of a course. Topics can include, but not be limited to, the teaching of translation at the undergraduate and graduate levels; the role of technology in translation training; the connection between theory and practice; the use of translation as a teaching tool in literature and language classes at all levels. Please e-mail 250-word abstracts to Marella Feltrin-Morris, Ithaca College, mfeltrinmorris@ithaca.edu
Teaching Writing in the Digital Age: Literacy, Access, and Community (Roundtable): The purpose of this roundtable is to debate and explore the complex interrelationships between notions of literacy, access, and community and the pedagogical implications they bring to the 21st Century composition classroom. Possible topics include new definitions of literacy, ethical and material questions of access, and the impact of technology on the formation of communities within and beyond the classroom. Send 250-300 word abstracts to lynn.reid14@gmail.com.

Professional

Pedagogy: “Rethinking Teaching in Lean Times”

Women’s and Gender Studies: “The Outsider Within: Women as Contingent Faculty in the Academy”

College ‘Dropouts’: Teachers’ Journeys From the Ivory Tower to the Trenches (Roundtable): Ph.Ds who have made the transition from the college/university to the high school classroom are invited to submit 250-500 word proposals, sharing their experiences (good, bad, surprising) navigating some of the following issues: the job search, adapting to the high school schedule, the transition to high school students and colleagues, workload, autonomy, and seeing college differently, ‘though the looking glass’ of a high school teacher’s perspective. Please send proposals to Siobhan Kelly, kelly@rutgersprep.org.
Diversity, Identity and Graduate School (Roundtable): The Graduate Caucus of the Northeast Modern Language Association invites proposals for a roundtable on issues of diversity and identity that graduate students face during their academic training. We are interested in hearing from individuals who can speak to how to balance the personal, professional and political while in graduate school. Please send a statement of interest to Maureen Gallagher, Graduate Caucus Communications Director, mogallag@german.umass.edu.
Publishing Articles in Academic Journals (Roundtable): Participants in this rountable will include two journal editors, two reviewers and two-three authors. They will demystify the process of publishing academic articles, explain why good articles are rejected, and elaborate on what reviewers look for in publishable articles. They will share their experiences regarding the feedback they received from reviewers who evaluated their submissions, and will give examples of the revisions they were asked to make to their papers before they were published. Participation in this panel is by invitation.
Traditional, Alternative and Successful Approaches through Academe (Roundtable): Sponsored by the Graduate Student Caucus. This roundtable welcomes a discussion of both traditional and alternative paths to successful careers after graduate school. Talks might include anything from how to develop a traditional CV to how to cater your letter of interest for a two-year institution to how to translate your academic skills into desired criteria for a non-academic trajectory. Send abstract to bspence@complit.umass.edu.
Translation: The ‘Next Big Thing’ to Revitalize the Humanities? (Roundtable): Are translation studies the ‘next big thing’ to revitalize the Humanities? Where should they be housed within the academy? This roundtable will discuss these issues and will try to devise a way “to create a presence and a respect for the work of translation as a widely recognized and regarded field of professional academic endeavor.” (Martin Riker, Inside Higher Ed, January 6, 2010) Please submit 250-word proposals which address these issues and the growing importance of translation studies to Mary Sisler at rti@langlab.rutgers.edu
Who Will Advocate for Our Part-Time Faculty? (Roundtable): This roundtable will address the situation facing part-time faculty in our colleges and universities today. It asks of its participants, who will advocate on behalf of the part-time, contingent and adjunct faculty who currently make up a great percentage of our professiorate and who lack sufficient compensation, benefits and respect? Can unionizing improve their situation, or are administrators, department heads or the part-timers themselves responsible for helping part-timers improve their situations? Abstracts to <chenderson@clcillinois.edu>

Russian/Eastern European

East European Literatures: Thinking Change, Conceiving Futures (Roundtable): This roundtable seeks proposals regarding East European literary texts, written after 1989, or contemporary theoretical works that implement or perform a certain vision for the future of the country from which the text hails or of the region as a whole. Because the way change is conceptualized, on both the macro and the micro levels, has a direct bearing on the way a future is conceived, particularly encouraged are submissions that explore this relation. Please email 250-word abstracts to Mihaela Harper at <mharper@my.uri.edu>
Not Through My Skin: Sexuality and the Female Body in East-Central European Film: This panel considers cinematic explorations and exploitations of the female body that have long been part of the East-Central European cultural imaginary. We are seeking papers that propose novel ways to examine the continuities and disruptions in the representations of female erotica from the communist period all the way to the recently emerging cinemas of East-Central Europe. Please send 300-500 word abstracts and brief biographical statements to Lilla Tőke, lxtnce@rit.edu.
Russian 20th-Century Poetry in New Contexts: The panel seeks papers on the role of Russian twentieth-century poets in Russian and European cultural life and their contribution to the development of modern thought in Russia. It seeks to explore the relationship between text and image in general. It will highlight the role of Russian 20th-c. poetry in shaping the national identity inside and outside Russia and its use in political activism in the 1920s-1960s. Please send your 250-350 word abstracts and brief biographical statements to Alexandra Smith: alexandra.smith@ed.ac.uk
Russian Dissident Art and Writing in the Soviet Union: The underground market of dissident work in the visual and literary arts became increasingly influential in the general cultural life of major Russian cities during the last two decades of the Soviet Union. We will examine the legacy of Russian dissident art, literature and the genre of politicized belles-lettres known as publitsistika. Abstracts of no more than 250 words should be sent to Alexandar Mihailovic (cllazm@hofstra.edu) and may also consider how dissident identities contributed to a new paradigm of the Russian intelligentsia.
Russian Poetry: from Golden Age to Silver Age: This panel invites submissions on any aspect of Russian poetry up to and including the Silver Age. We have a particular -- but not exclusive-- interest in comparative proposals, especially those involving non-Russian poetry; in women poets, especially from the nineteenth century; and in proposals that thematically focus on meta-poetry, or on poetry about Russia. We welcome abstracts on other topics as well. Please submit 250-word abstracts by e-mail in .doc format, preferably with an outline of your proposed paper, to: frosset@wheatonma.edu
Russian Representations of World War II (Seminar): This seminar invites papers on Russian representations of the Second World War in diverse artistic and rhetorical modes (poetry, prose, journalism, music, visual art, film, translation). Papers might treat creative and documentary practices during the war (1941-45); the war as a cultural or intellectual moment; issues of narrative, memory, selfhood, and ethics. Seminar participants will submit 10-15 page papers for pre-circulation. Please send 250-word abstracts to evanbusk@rci.rutgers.edu (Emily Van Buskirk, Rutgers University).

Spanish/Portugese

Cultural Studies and Film: “Affects and Spaces in Latin American Cinema, Performance and Literature”; “Constructing ‘Brazilian-ness’ through Cinematic Manipulations”; “Experimentation in Latin American Film”

Pedagogy: “Getting to Advanced Low: Preparation for the Oral Proficiency Interview”; “(Re)Teaching the Spanish Classics: Integrating Technology, the Web, and Film”

Spanish/Portuguese: “Eighteenth Century Portuguese Language and Culture”

Transnational Literatures: “Music Contingencies in Narrated Americas.”; “Narrated Objects: Literature and Material Culture in the Americas”

Women’s and Gender Studies: “The Power of Marginal Spaces in the Works of Carmen Martin Gaite”

2001-2011: Terror and Trauma on the Post-9/11 Spanish Stage: This session seeks papers on early twenty-first-century Spanish Peninsular theatre that illustrate how contemporary Spanish playwrights have appropriated terror and trauma (gender violence, political oppression, the examination of past offences [civil war], terrorist attacks, etc) as technique, topic, setting, performative topos, or for other aspects of staging. Submit papers to Eileen Doll, Loyola University New Orleans, edoll@loyno.edu.
Anti-Hero and Victims in the Spanish Theatre of the 21st Century: This session aims to foment discussion of some constructions of the neoliberal anti-hero and/or victims in the Spanish theatre since the end of the millennium until today. It would be of great interest to learn what is an anti-hero these days, how Spanish theatre is dealing with global issues, is violence part of the new order? What is the link between failure and anti-hero? Rossana Fialdini, McGill University, rossana.fialdinizambrano@mcgill.ca
Behind the Lens: Immigration and Globalization in Spanish Contemporary Film: This panel invites papers that analyze, discuss, and interrogate the active role that men and women film directors play in the cinematic portrayal of the immigrants and their stories of displacement and integration, and how the representation of these marginalized voices negotiate their own identities in the public and private space, or there is also a space in-between? Please, send inquiries or 250-500 word abstracts in English or Spanish to Javier Venturi, University of Massachusetts, Amherst.E-mail address: oihcconip@gmail.com.
Body and the Politics of Resistance in the 21st century Latin American Narrative (Roundtable): This roundtable seeks papers on the texts that represent the body as a modality of resistance in Latin America and Brazil. It will examine the ways in which a body as a text can be altered by space, time, class, race, and gender. The topics of this roundtable include, but are not limited to: sexuality, violence, memory, trauma, cosmetic and gender reassignment surgery, sex tourism, among others. Papers on texts from the Hispanic Caribbean particularly welcome. Send 250-300 word abstracts English/Spanish to Elena Valdez geny_el@yahoo.com.
Center and Periphery: Representing Spanishness in Contemporary Literature: This panel seeks to explore, through different lenses, the fragmentation and renegotiation of Spanish cultural and political identity in tension with its peripheral “nations.” Papers that explore representations of Spanishness within the dialectics of center and periphery (including language debates and cultural practices) that emerged as openly plural concepts in post-Franco Spain are welcomed. Send papers to Eugenia Romero, Ohio State University, romero.25@osu.edu.
Comparative Approaches to Early Modern Spanish and British Drama: This panel seeks papers on Spanish Golden Age and Elizabethan drama from a comparativist approach through a variety of perspectives such as literary, performative, social and historical in order to enrich and fill the gaps of a parallel and a merging dramatic tradition. Papers can be in either English or Spanish. Please send 250-500 word abstracts to Esther Fernandez, Sarah Lawrence College, efernandez@slc.edu.
Critical Discourses: Early Modern Spanish Literary Women: This session will consider research on works by women writers, or the literary representation of women, in varied literary genres of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spain, that explore: cultural identification vs. personal identity; critical discourses that support/subvert established literary authority and dominant discourses. Please submit electronically a 500 word abstract/paper, contact information, and a brief biographical statement to: jcammara@aol.com. Joan Cammarata, Modern Languages, Manhattan College, Riverdale, New York 10471.
Crossing Borders and Performing Gender on the Spanish-Speaking Stage: Sponsored by Feministas Unidas. The 21st Century has seen increased globalization and marketplace demands cause human migration to skyrocket, increasingly fueling shifts in the identities of Spanish-speaking women. This panel seeks to question how the staging of female migration in Spanish-language theatre acts to inform the evolution of feminine/ feminist/ lesbian/ femme/ and butch identities. Please send 250-300 word abstracts in the form of an attachment to: Maria DiFrancesco, mdifrancesco@ithaca.edu
Cyberspace and Literature in Latin America: What Does The Future Entail?: What is the future of literature in Latin America vis-à-vis the imminent advancement of cyberspace options as the main media for contemporary readers/viewers? Published writers increasingly have created blogs and other forms of presence on the Internet –what does the future may entail for literature? Will cyberspace become a new art form per se? Will literature, as we know it, disappear? Send 250 words abstract to Hilda Chacón (hchacon6@naz.edu)
Displaced Communities: How do displaced subjects imagine community? This panel welcomes papers on cultural expressions from Latin America addressing this question. Possible topics could include: the effects of differences within people and places; the politics of memory and human rights; the potentiality of alternative forms of citizenship to articulate unassimilated otherness; and the (re)imagination of dynamic communities in various “elsewheres.” Please send a 250-word abstract to Esteban Loustaunau (eloustaunau@assumption.edu) and Lauren Shaw (lshaw@elmira.edu).
Eighteenth Century Portuguese Language and Culture: This panel seeks papers which examine the various options related with Portuguese Language and Culture, especially with the appearance of the printed press in the fifteenth century until the emergence of the Academies in the eighteenth century. Submit proposal to José Machado or Fernando Moreira, Universidade de Tras-os-Montes e Alto Douro, jleonmachado@gmail.com or fmoreira@utad.pt
El español como lengua extranjera: Problemas en el proceso de adquisición: This panel invites researchers in the field of sla to present their work on the acquisition of spanish as a second language. We examine how adult learners acquire spanish as a second language, in an institutional context, taking into consideration some very important factors in this acquisition process such as the learner´s mother tongue, interlanguage, language transfer, universal principles, etc. Send abstracts to Konstantina Bekiou at bekiouk@mail.montclair.edu
Espana y America Latina: de un lado a otro del mar en las polemicas del siglo XX: El intento de esta sección es de reunir, como en un mosaico, los debates y las polémicas literarias que nacen, explotan y mueren el curso del siglo XX, considerando a autores, a críticos, a estudiosos del continente europeo al mundo hispanoamericano. Se considerarán estudios de un lado a otro del océano y sobretodo críticas destacadas menos conocidas y estudiadas o que involucran países y autores menos considerados.Enviar un abstract de 250 palabras a acalarot@kean.edu
Ficcion, Intriga y Fantasma. Novela historica vs narrativa testimonial: This panel will examine the fiction of Javier Marias and Arturo Perez-Reverte. The topics of the panel include, but are not limited to: novels, short stories, and articles. Please submit 250-500 word abstracts(preferably MSWord or PDF attachments)to Pablo Pintado-Casas, Kean University, NJ; pcasas@kean.edu
The Genre of the Self Portrait in Hispanic Poetry: This panel will study the genre of the self-portrait in Hispanic literature. Is the genre a form of autobiography, auto-“mythography”, or a mask? What relationship is there between the empirical “I” of the poet and the enunciating or represented subject of the text? Is the genre employed differently by male and female writers and in different centuries? How does the development of the genre in Hispanic poetry compare to that of other literatures? Please submit a 250-500 word abstract in English or Spanish to marlene.gottlieb@manhattan.edu
Giving Testimony to Transnational Migrations: Gender and Witnessing in Hispanic: This panel seeks papers dealing with the migrant woman’s experience within Hispanic contexts: the transatlantic movement of Iberian and Ibero-American women and migratory movements to and from Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean. How do literature and film bear witness to the crossing of national, linguistic, gendered and sexual borders? How are the lives and experiences of these women constructed in literary and visual representations? Please send 250 word abstracts and brief biographical statements to Danny Barreto, danny.barreto@ic.sunysb.edu
Imagining Communities: Cuban Women Poets of the Diaspora: This panel examines the poetry of Cuban women of the diaspora. In addition to an exploration of displacement and its poetic rendition, this panel also considers issues of identity, memory, language, spatial representations as well as diverse expressions of sensuality. Please send abstracts to Elena M. Martinez (Elena.Martinez@baruch.cuny.edu) by Sept. 15, 2010.
The Intellectual as a Public Figure in 20th Century Latin America: This panel seeks papers on Latin American intellectuals of the 20th century. Topics of the panel include, but are not limited to, the following: transnational networks in which intellectuals participated; how they establish themselves and shape practices in their cultural and literary fields; relationship between intellectuals and minorities; redefinitions of the concept of the intellectual throughout the past century. Please send 250-400-word abstracts and brief biographical statements to Cristóbal Cardemil (crisfcar@gmail.com).
Issues on Ecology in Latin American Literature and Culture: This panel seeks papers on Latin American literature or culture, of any historical period, with a focus on society and nature interrelations, the re-thinking of the human/non-human dichotomy, or the development of a sense of place/planet in colonial, postcolonial, or migratory contexts. It is particularly interested in representations, ideas, or discourses of nature in light of environmental discourses and issues, global or local, that have been raised at least since the late 1960s. 300-500 word abstracts to jmarcone@spanport.rutgers.edu
Long Life Movida Madrileña! (Roundtable): If you’ve ever asked yourself “¿qué-harías-tú-en-un-ataque-preventivo-de-la-URSS?” or looked in the mirror and said to yourself “soy-feliz-y-no-pienso-nunca-en-nadie-más-que-en-mí”, this session may interest you. If you are among those “enamorados de la moda juvenil” and dream of being “un bote de Colón y salir en la televisión”, then surely “La bola de cristal” was the soundtrack of your childhood for a long time. In that case, send us your 15-minute therapeutic presentation of any aspect of La Movida Madrileña to hfontanet@rider.edu
Manifestations of Madness and Love in 19th and 20th Century Spanish Literature: Esta sesión busca analizar las distintas maneras en que los escritores españoles de los siglos XIX y XX representan en sus obras temas tan universales como la locura y el amor. En concreto, serán de especial interés aquellos trabajos en los que se explore la intersección de la locura y/o el amor con aspectos de la identidad, la familia, la religión, la política y/o la economía. Todos los interesados en participar deben enviar su resumen de 250-350 palabras a Marta Manrique Gómez: mmanriquegomez@middlebury.edu
Paradigmas de sexualidad en la escritura (re)escritura de los cuentos de hadas: Como expresión de valores culturales, los cuentos se modificaron con el tiempo. En el Siglo XVII perdieron su contenido sexual al representarse a las mujeres como seres pasivos. Durante la mitad del siglo XX, las escritoras desacreditan estas construcciones para reclamar su derecho a manejar su sexualidad. Analizaremos los paradigmas de sexualidad tanto en los cuentos tradicionales como en su re-escritura a la luz de los cambios sociales en Latinoamérica y España. Abstracts to spahra@macewan.ca.
The Performative City: Contemporary Spanish Urban Culture: This panel aims to develop a conversation at the crossroads of studies concerning urban space, cultural geography, performance, and identity in contemporary Spain. We invite proposals on topics such as gender, sexuality, nationalism, immigration, public space and politics, cyberspace, etc. Proposals may address documentary and narrative film, architecture, theater, social movements, and literature. Presentations should be in either Spanish or English. Submit 200-350 word abstracts by e-mail to Molly Palmer mlpal@rci.rutgers.edu.
Publics, Markets and the Early Fashioning of a Picaresque Genre: The topic explores role of publics, markets and writers in the early fashioning of a ‘picaresque genre.’ Issues to be explored are: growing interest in picaresque figures in early modern literary and cultural material; role of intermediary agents (book editors, publishers, panegyrists, censors, etc) in shaping picaresque genre; surge in interest in prose fiction and increasing awareness among writers and cultural mediators of a marketplace for cultural goods. Approaches beyond Spain are welcome. Felipe Ruan, Brock University, fruan@brocku.ca
Reflections on Lusophone Literatures and Cultures: This is a Spanish and Portuguese Board Sponsored session highlighting topics that address any aspect or region of the Portuguese-speaking world. Inter-disciplinary topics that discuss the diversity of Lusophone literatures and cultures are encouraged but not mandatory. Please submit 250-300 word proposals to Cristina Santos at csantos@brocku.ca.
Trauma and Memory in literature and film of Latin America: This panel will explore the connections between trauma/ memory and literature/ film in Latin America where the results of the dictatorships were disappeared citizens and traumatized populations. Papers may explore the politics of remembrance, emblematic memory, private vs. collective memory, and the ways in which a country can recover from collective PTSD, within a specific geographical context or from a comparative, cross-cultural perspective. Please send 250 word abstract in Spanish or English to Adriana Rosman-Askot, arosman@tcnj.edu
Vertientes de la litertura fantastica en Hispanoamerica (Seminar): Este seminario les invita a presentar para su consideración ensayos en español o inglés sobre la literatura fantástica femenina en cualquiera de sus modalidades. Se acepta todo acercamiento crítico-teórico conectado con lo fantástico. Favor de enviar su resumen de 250 palabras a mara_garcia@byu.edu y vsauneroward@nmhu.edu
Women Writing Spanish American Revolution(s): The Women Writing Latin American Revolution(s) Panel endeavours to focus on those areas of the Americas which experienced revolutionary movements since the 1950s. Women have lived a social shift from traditional roles, reflected in the writing of women authors which articulates a feminine penetration of both the literary and political spheres. Submissions by/about women writers from all geographic areas of the Americas are welcomed. Please send a 300 word abstract and biography to Sophie Lavoie (Univ. of New Brunswick) at: lavoie@unb.ca.
Women, Love, and Eroticism in Latin American Poetry: This panel will explore the image of the beloved women and the woman in love in the twentieth-century Latin American poetry. Its purpose is to create a dialogue about poets’ depictions of women that poets have attempted in Latin American societies, within the context of love and eroticism. Comparative approaches in Spanish/English/Portuguese are suitable, but non-comparative studies would also be considered. The method of analysis is open. Send abstracts (200-300 words) to María Cristina Campos Fuentes, DeSales Univ: camposcristina@hotmail.com

Theory and Literary Criticism

British and Anglophone: “Marvell and the Theorization of History”; “Renaissance Trauma”; “Representing a Cure: Embodiment, Medical Knowledge, and Early Modern Literature”; “Samuel Beckett and the Encounter of Philosophy and Literature”; “Theorizing the Victorian Novel”

Comparative Languages: “Duly Noted: Approaches to Paratext”; “Literary Dress: Fashioning the Fictional Self”; “Revolutionary Terror”; “The Space of Memory”

Creative Writing: “Experiments in Hybrid Essay”

Cultural Studies and Film: “Cinema and Demos”; “Surplus Formulations in Detection Fiction”; “Understanding Avatar: A Movie Made for the Masses”

French and Francophone: “The Complexity and Originality of Camus’s Writings”; “Manipulative Forewords: Authors’ Attempts to Impose Their Own Agenda in Preface”; “Postmodern French Literature”

Italian: “Calvino and the city: new critical perspectives”; “Corporeality: Italian Literary Bodies of the XX and XXI Centuries:”; “Diseased Imaginations: Illness in Modern Italian Fantastic Fiction”; “Immagine e Forma nell’ Estetica Barocca”; “L’Altro Tasso: A Discussion of Tasso’s ‘Not-So-Minor’ Works”

Russian/Eastern European: “East European Literatures: Thinking Change, Conceiving Futures”; “Russian 20th-Century Poetry in New Contexts”

Spanish/Portuguese: “Cyberspace and Literature in Latin America: What Does The Future Entail?”; “Ficcion, Intriga y Fantasma. Novela historica vs narrativa testimonial”; “Manifestations of Madness and Love in 19th and 20th Century Spanish Literature”

Transnational Literatures: “‘Only the Difficult Stimulates’: The Interplay of Opacities in Caribbean Lit”; “Zero World Literature: The Writing of the Outside”

Women’s and Gender Studies: “Simon de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex: Newly Translated and Rediscovered”

Articulating the Human and its Others: Sponsored by the Society for Critical Exchange. How do literary and other texts articulate, reify, or produce the human--as category, claim, effect, etc.--as well as its oppositional others, such as the inhuman, subhuman, or posthuman? Is it possible to think or express what is counter to the human without reinscribing the human? How are multiplicities or hybridities of human natures or essences articulated? Abstracts for 20-minute papers to Scott DeShong, spdes@conncoll.edu.
Authority and Uncertainty in Poetic Language and Practice: How do poets construct authority for their art? What are the sources of lyric authority and how do poets exploit and challenge that authority productively? How do the resources of uncertainty enrich and complicate reception? We invite theoretical approaches based on readings of particular poets or poems and we welcome proposals that examine encounters between institutional authority and the authority of poetry and the poetic. Please send 300-word abstracts to Andrea Scott amstwo@princeton.edu and Stephen Donatelli sdonatel@princeton.edu.
Cyber Aesthetics: Communication, Literature and Digital Reproducibility: This panel seeks to explore the aesthetic consequences of digital reproducibility in hyperfiction and virtual realities. It thus focuses on three dimensions of the new media: (1) The notion of the Sign; (2) Communication; (3) Aesthetics and Literature. Therefore the relations between author, recipient and text will be in the center of discussion. Please send 500 word abstracts and brief biographical statements to Julia Genz (julia.genz@uni-tuebingen.de) or Ulrike Küchler (ulrike.kuechler@uni-tuebingen.de).
Ecocritical Activisms and Activist Ecologies: Ecocriticism informs ecological activisms, and vice versa. If ecocriticisms are important for educating desires and inspiring practices, then ecocritics take on activist roles that access spaces outside academia. What kind of change can the intersections and tensions between ecocriticism and activism bring about? This panel seeks to explore the ecologically-aware and imaginative possibilities of ecocritical activism. Please send abstracts of 500 words or less to Georg Drennig and MaryAnne Laurico at ecocrit.nemla2011@gmail.com.
I See What You Say: Exploring Intersections of the Visual and the Literary: This panel invites papers that consider the relationship between literary texts and visual images—paintings, illustrations, photographs, works of graphic design—that are put in a particular dialogic relationship. We welcome papers that aim to theorize this relationship on a general level or specific interpretations of a particularly compelling visual-verbal pair. Please send 250 word abstracts to Geoff Bender at gbender@mail.rochester.edu.
Intention and Intentionality: Sixty years after the publication of ‘The Intentional Fallacy,’ the problem of intentionality continues to haunt literary criticism. This panel seeks papers that historicize authorial intention (early modern period to present) and bring this into conversation with contemporary critical practice. Papers that do this and also examine the philosophical and interdisciplinary dimensions of authorial intention are especially encouraged. Submit 250 word abstracts to jsgang@rutgers.edu.
Legal Fictions: The characterization of extant laws as mere fictions of the state has often been a strategy for legal reform. This panel invites historical and theoretical examinations of the epistemological affinities and/or disparities between law and literature. Topics might include: legal fictions such as corporate personhood, the categorization of enslaved persons as “chattel,” literary allusions in law, natural rights discourse, law as rhetoric and coercion, reformist literature. Email 250-500 word abstracts to Carrie Hyde, chyde@eden.rutgers.edu
Literary Darwinism and Social Justice: Are literary Darwinism’s attempts at “essentialism” merely based on cultural constructs that can have negative social consequences? Or, could a focus on tensions between the cultural and the universal lead to a deeper understanding of our selves that could be used for the promotion of social justice? This panel seeks papers on how an evolutionary approach to literature might prove either beneficial or detrimental for the goals of promoting social justice. Email 250-300 word abstracts to Todd O. Williams. williams@kutztown.edu
Literary Landscapes: Representation and Imagination: This panel explores representations of landscape in works of fiction and literary non-fiction. It investigates the relationship between literary and literal landscapes, and the ways in which they are connected. It asks how the literary construction of a landscape becomes an iconic or mythic landscape that reappears in other literary works, art, or the popular imagination, and influences the perception of an actual landscape. Papers may examine works from any literature or time period. Send 250 word proposals to <mrye@fdu.edu>.
Literature and the Experience of Ecstasy: This panel will address the particular kind of knowledge generated by literary reconstructions of experiences of ecstasy. We wish to interpret and discuss how these literary transpositions – necessarily displaced from the actual experience – participate in transforming the experience of ecstasy, which usually seems to imply some suspension of the self into concentration or awareness that may produce a particular, more intuitive, knowledge. Please send 250-500 words proposals to Sara Danièle Bélanger Michaud, sdbm22@gmail.com .
Medical Visions of Modernism: This panel seeks to explore the relationship between emerging medical disciplines at the end of the nineteenth century (psychology, neurology, phrenology, and finally psychoanalysis) and Modernism. We are interested in papers which explore the role of language and its limits in articulating illness in literary fiction, medical treatises, and film studies.Maureen Chun mctwo@princeton.edu and Masha Mimran mmimran@princeton.edu
Methodologies of Science and Literature (Roundtable): This panel will explore the state of the discipline in the field of science and literature, with particular emphasis on work that surveys, historicizes and/or theorizes contemporary methodologies. This will be a roundtable discussion. Abstracts of no more than 300 words to Rebekah Sheldon at rebekah.c.sheldon@gmail.com.
Persons and Things: a Roundtable in Memorial to Barbara Johnson (Roundtable): In celebration of the life and work of Barbara Johnson, we will focus on one of her last books and its significance for fields ranging from law to film to the history of art. The essays in Persons and Things bring together concerns from throughout Johnson’s career, and we will ponder her lifetime impact on criticism. She provokes us to reconsider the self-evident yet slippery difference between persons and mere objects, how ‘non-life seems to lie behind what is considered most deeply human.’ Email Charles Henebry, Boston U, henebry@bu.edu
Posthumanism, Biopower, and Modern and Contemporary War (Roundtable): How have representations of war since the beginning the twentieth century engaged with ideas of biopower and posthumanism? Proposals might investigate representations of technology and embodiment in war, the tropes of modern war involving machines or animals (e.g. helicopters in Vietnam, dogs in torture scenarios), or how such cases affect theories of life and machinery. Proposals (300 words or fewer) addressing these issues in literature, film, and other relevant texts should be sent to Ryan Hediger, La Salle University, hedigerr@lasalle.edu.
Questioning Hybridity-Discourse: Colonial Métissage, Postcolonialism, and Globa: This panel seeks papers that address hybridity from colonial, postcolonial and global perspectives. Proposals should critically examine postcolonial discourse on hybridity and offer new theoretical and empirical perspectives on the problematic relation of postcolonial studies to globalization. Papers that question the role of hybridity-discourse as a counter hegemonic agency are particularly welcome. Please submit 250-500 word abstracts to Amar Acheraiou at acherayou@sympatico.ca
Rethinking the Postmodern Monster: This panel seeks papers on theories of monstrosity. How does monstrosity occlude or benefit theories of genre/ gender/ nation? How do theories of monstrosity deal with the post-human/ post-national? How can monster theory be circumscribed as a unique ontology? This panel also seeks papers that apply monster theories in unique ways. Please submit 250-500 word abstracts on any aspect of the postmodern monster to Heather Cyr at h.cyr@queensu.ca.
Routes of Memory: Remapping Trauma Studies: This panel invites papers that explore traumas in a variety of genres (film, literature, photography, graphic novels) and that examine the relationships between identity and memory; the tensions between mourning, bearing witness and assuming ownership over histories; and, particularly for post-memory subjects, the anxieties that accrue to aestheticizing traumas one experiences at a generational remove. Please send 400 to 500-word abstracts of your papers to Rachel Ann Walsh at Rachel.ann.walsh1@gmail.com.
Separation as Condition and as Solution (Seminar): An interdisciplinary seminar on aspects of separation: race, religion, gender, politics, family and more. Examples include: gender separation in prayer houses and schools; the Berlin Wall; the separation barrier in Israel / Palestine; Jim Crow and Apartheid laws; religious taboos of separation; separation of the sick or disabled. Please send abstracts of 500 words on literary or visual representations and readings of separation to Aryeh Amihay (aamihay@princeton.edu). For further information, visit http://www.princeton.edu/~aamihay/sep.pdf
Serial Narratives and Temporality: This panel addresses the various relationships between seriality and temporality. We invite theoretical reflections as well as analyses of individual serial narratives (in literature, television, comics, video games, blogs, etc.) that explore the notion of narrative time: Is time in serials slow or fast, continuous or cyclical? Or is it – as recent publications suggest – essentially queer? Please send 250-500 word abstracts and brief biographical statements to Toni Pape, Université de Montréal, toni.pape@umontreal.ca.
The Spatial Turn in Literary Theory (Seminar): This seminar addresses the significance of the so-called “spatial turn” for literary theory. We welcome proposals for papers that examine theoretical attempts to conceptualize spatiality, but are also interested in papers that focus on specific spatial constructions in exemplary literary texts. Please send 300-400 word abstract to Nicola Behrmann (behrmann@rci.rutgers.edu) or Julia Weber (j.weber@yale.edu)
Uncovering the Tradition of Vitalism in 20th Century Literature: This panel seeks submissions that address literatures of vitalism--the belief that the material world and humans are best understood as being shaped by a dynamic field of energy and flow--and the aesthetic, ethical and political implications of vitalism. We are primarily interested in twentieth century literature, but also welcome submissions about vitalism in other periods (e.g. Romanticism and the Renaissance). Please submit 250-500 word abstracts to Philip Longo, Rutgers University, plongo@gmail.com.
Word, Image, and Contemporary Lyric Voice(s): This panel will explore the constructions and/or disruptions of lyric voice(s) in contemporary ekphrasis. Topics might include: ekphrastic persona poems, the slippage or distance between speaker and poet identity, multivocal ekphrastic pieces, poet/artist collaborations or dialogue, serial lyric ekphrasis, spoken word or performance art that engages both verbal and visual, and hybrid texts or digital media that “speak” in lyric ways. Email a 1-2 page abstract and brief bio to Anne Keefe, Rutgers University (akeefe@eden.rutgers.edu).

Transnational Literatures

British and Anglophone: “Creativity and Imagination at the Fin De Siècle (1870-1910)”; “Neomedievalism”; “New Old Stories: Reinventing African Narratives in Black British Fiction”; “Transnational Ireland: The Celtic Tiger and Beyond”

Comparative Languages: “Unreliability as a Narrative Trope in Postcolonial Literature”

Cultural Studies and Film: “Concepts of Identity in Post-colonial African Culture”; “New Media and the Asian Diaspora”; “Reading the Postcolonial Other in Contemporary Film”; “Reshaping the Italian American Identity”

German: “Hybrid Identities: Second Generation Immigrants (Austria, Germany, Switzerland)”; “Images of Eastern Europe in Recent German Literature and Film”; “‘Nationalism-with-a-big-N’ in German Historical Fiction of the Long 19th-Century”; “Rafik Schami - The Poet and Storyteller”; “Transnational Genres in 18th Century German Literature”; “Writing Surveillance: Transcultural Perspectives”

Italian: “Charting the Circulation of Italian Culture, 1660-1800”; “Is There an Italian-American Novel?”; “Italian and Anglo-American Literature: A Dialogue through Translation”

Spanish/Portuguese: “Displaced Communities”; “Giving Testimony to Transnational Migrations: Gender and Witnessing in Hispanic”; “The Intellectual as a Public Figure in 20th Century Latin America”; “Issues on Ecology in Latin American Literature and Culture”; “Publics, Markets and the Early Fashioning of a Picaresque Genre”; “Reflections on Lusophone Literatures and Cultures”

Theory and Literary Criticism: “Questioning Hybridity-Discourse: Colonial Métissage, Postcolonialism, and Globa”

Women’s and Gender Studies: “Death, Dying and Dislocation: Transnational Grief Literature”; “Global Feminist Science/Speculative Fictions Advance Social Change”; “Representations of Gendered Transnational Identity in Contemporary Literature”

World Literatures (non-European Languages): “Contemporary Fiction from the Middle East”; “Growing Up in China: the Coming of Age in Chinese Literature”

The Art of Villainy: Machiavelli and the Creation of the Fictional Villain: This panel will explore Machiavelli’s impact on villains from the early modern period to today, from Iago and Milton’s Satan to Lex Luthor, Voldemort and Tony Soprano. Machiavelli may have inspired these writers, but how have their own cultural backgrounds and historical contexts shaped their depiction of his ideas? This panel hopes to gain a better understanding of how our view of Machiavelli and our view of villainy have changed over the years. Please submit 250-300 word abstracts (MSWord) to Jackie Cameron at jackiec159@hotmail.com.
Bohemiens, Tsiganes, Gitanos, Roma: Representing the Margins: This panel seeks to assess the representation of the Roma in European literature, film or music from the middle ages to the present. The central issue to be addressed is the problem of representing a culture in light of the culture’s resistance to representation. Please email 250-500 word abstracts to Thomas Kealy, Colby-Sawyer College, tkealy@colby-sawyer.edu.
Canada and the African Diasporic Literary Imaginary: This panel invites scholars to investigate the presence of Canada in an African Diasporic literary imaginary, focusing on writers who examine black subjects and subjectivities within Canadian landscapes (both urban and rural), but also attending to representations of African Canadians and the idea of Canada in literature from across the diaspora. Please send 300-500 word abstracts and brief biographical statements to Kristin Moriah at kmoriah@gc.cuny.edu.
Censored Literature (Roundtable): Teaching literature censored by governments or self-censored means engaging with social. religious, political and sexual taboos dialectically related to the courage of writers. This panel will explore pedagogical methods appropriate for this topic, with the objective of exploring the secrets of other cultures and discovering our own biases. These methods could include close textual analysis, role-playing, blogging and mock trials. Please send proposals to Julia Keefer, jk12@nyu.edu.
Central European Authors: This panel seeks to analyze whether or not writers from Central European nations have been allowed to have a national literary identity. Papers that discuss minority literature, transnational literature, or textual politics would be ideal, although papers on individual Central European authors such as Franz Kafka, Milan Kundera, Bohumil Hrabal and Robert Musil would also be considered. Abstracts can be submitted to emhall47@gmail.com
Complicated Space: Reading the Transnational Text (Roundtable): This roundtable attempts to define transnational as a literary term, using diverse examples of transnational literary texts from across the world. Contributors are invited to propose specific readings of the literary meanings and opportunities associated with the transnational in particular places across the globe. We hope to foster a lively dialogue which extends awareness of the range of human experience and cultural identities represented in transnational texts. Send submissions to Elaine Savory, New School University, savorye@newschool.edu.
Contemporary Nordic Literature: This panel seeks papers on developments in Nordic Literature over the last 20 years, including works by authors, film directors and playwrights from Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland, Finland, as well as the Faroe Islands and Greenland. Topics might address national identity, cultural sovereignty and integration into the European Union, or focus on individuals such as Stieg Larrson, Peter Høeg, Lars Von Trier, Aki Kaurismäki, Signa Sørensen and others. Please send 300-500 word abstracts and brief bios to Jeff Johnson. johnsonj@brevardcc.edu.
Global Magical Realisms and Speculative Fiction: Recent global fiction has pushed the boundaries of realism and magical realism with a variety of fantastic and speculative devices. This panel is interested in expanding the range of cultural interpretations across the spectrum of magical realism and speculative fiction. Why is it important to distinguish among terms such as fantasy, myth, spirituality, and magic? In what ways do cultural and literary traditions shape the writers’ imagination? Please submit 250-500 word abstract to Anita Duneer at ADuneer@ric.edu.
Globalization and the Americas: Challenging Categories of Literary Production: Patrick Chamoiseau’s notion of the Territory Créolité connects the Americas and the Atlantic world through an examination of the creoleness of the Caribbean. Our conversation will begin with this notion as an example of engaging the local as an act of resistance. Those texts that demonstrate both an awareness of local cosmologies and an informed sense of place and connectedness across categories of language, culture, and our sense of being in the world are of particular interest. (please submit paper proposals to: rio@buffalo.edu)
Intersections of language and culture: Sprachgemisch, métissage & code-switching: Using more than one language in a given text has a long tradition, from medieval religious spectacles to present-day pop culture, from “The Name of the Rose” to contemporary bilingual novels and plays. The panel invites contributions that focus on the significance of language change in spoken and written texts (novels, poetry, song lyrics, theater etc.) and examine the function of code-switching in the context of intersections of language and culture. Send proposals of 250 words, CV, and academic affiliation to Susanne Even (evens@indiana.edu).
Journeys of the Bicultural Self: Narrative Geographies from the Middle East (Roundtable): This roundtable seeks scholars who want to discuss the works of Middle Eastern authors from Turkey, Israel, Algeria, Iran, Egypt and other regions who write in English in order to generate new insights about the journeys of the bicultural self within a geographic narrative. What kinds of narratives emerge? Is there a transcendence of Eurocentric negations? Is the author historically located in his/her culture? Please send 300-500 word abstracts and brief biographical statements (via email) to Dr. Nilgun Anadolu-Okur nilgun.okur@gmail.com
The Legacy of Scandinavian Drama: Board-Sponsored. This session invites abstracts on the influence of Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg, while welcoming examinations of work by other Scandinavian playwrights. Send brief abstracts and cv to Barbara Mabee, Oakland University, mabee@oakland.edu with ‘Scandinavian Drama’ in subject line.
Memory of Borders, Borders of Memory: Life Writing at a Distance: This panel invites papers on “Life Writing at a Distance,” broadly defining both life writing and “distance” as spatial/geographical or temporal remove: Topobiography; eco-biography; heroic memoirs; missionary and spiritual autobiography; letters and epistolary life narratives; life narrative of/in place; biography, memoir and autobiography in exile; expatriate memoirs; life narratives in travel and tourism; ethnoautobiography; migrant memoir and testimony. Please submit to Mary Goodwin, National Taiwan Normal University, profgood@hotmail.com.
Modernism, Modernity, and Politics: Face-off or Interface?: This panel will engage the relationship between literary modernism, literary modernity, and politics in fiction from a transnational perspective. Is there a face-off with politics/politicized art in Anglo-American modernist fiction or an interface elided by critics? Does a hiatus exist between British and US modernists in this regard? How do non-western modern writers in colonial contexts negotiate western literary modernism and the politicized fictional discourses that mark modernity? Please send 250 word abstracts to smukherj@fas.harvard.edu
Music Contingencies in Narrated Americas.: When we talk about literature and music, are we also thinking about the social and political arena? This panel seeks papers on the intersection between music and narrative works considering how aesthetic experiences informed other discourses. The focus will be on Latin America but comparative submissions with the US are welcomed. Please, submit your 250-500 word abstract (Spanish, Portuguese or English) and a brief biographical statement to Enea Zaramella, ezaramel@princeton.edu.
Narrated Objects: Literature and Material Culture in the Americas: This panel will address the relationship between literature and materiality in the Latin American cultural production of the 19th and 20th centuries. The topics of the panel include, but are not limited to: subject/object relationship; commodity fetishism; materiality and visuality; forms, surfaces, and their boundaries; the text as an object; thing theory. Please send 300-500 word abstracts and brief biographical statements (English or Spanish) to Laura Gandolfi, Princeton University <gandolfi@princeton.edu>
‘Only the Difficult Stimulates’: The Interplay of Opacities in Caribbean Lit: Taking its conceptual point of departure from an aphorism by Cuban poet José Lezama Lima, this panel proposes to explore some recent theoretical/creative directions in Caribbean literature that radically challenge and unsettle easy assimilation and consumption by the metropole by insisting on their opacity (which Edouard Glissant has claimed as a right of all peoples). Please send all paper abstracts to Christopher Winks, Department of Comparative Literature, Queens College/CUNY, christopher.winks@qc.cuny.edu.
Post/Colonial Nostalgia in South Asian Literature: The panel examines how South Asian authors, residing in the Indian subcontinent and / or in the diaspora, writing in the late 19th-21st century in Anglophone or regional languages, grappled with the post/colonial legacy of past empires, and how they made sense of present-day dilemmas in light of those legacies. How did early authors, writing in the late 19th-early 20th century, envision their colonial pasts, and did their nostalgia differ from the nostalgia articulated by subsequent authors? Send proposals to Suha Kudsieh (kudsieh@gmail.com)
Theorizing Mobility in Transnational Literature: Increased movement of populations, information, and capital in the era of globalization has produced an emphasis in literary studies on the migrant, the cosmopolitan, and the exile, but little focus on practices of mobility. This panel will address treatments of mobility in transnational literature. Topics include, but are not limited to, migration, border crossing, cosmopolitanism, planetarity, and wanderlust. Please send 250-500 word abstracts to Penny Vlagopoulos, pigi.vlagopoulos@tamiu.edu, and Nicole Rizzuto, nicole.rizzuto@okstate.edu.
Traditional and Modern Medicine in Caribbean Literature: This panel will address the representation of healing and medical practices in Caribbean literature, both in the region and diasporas. Texts may include fiction, poetry, drama, memoir and autobiography, and may be written in English, French, Spanish, Dutch or any of the Creole languages of the Caribbean. Please send submission to Elaine Savory, New School University, savorye@newschool.edu.
What is ‘World Literature’?: In recent years, questions have been raised about ‘world literature.’ Yet, what is meant by the term is still in the making. This is an exploration into literary study that challenges problems posed by translation,linguistic imperialism and nationalism at the same time it attempts to map literary contact across the globe. Deepika Marya <deepikamarya@aol.com>
World Literature/Global Empathy: This panel invites papers that seek to understand the ways in which imaginative literature, in Jeremy Rifkin’s words, “allows empathic consciousness to grow and develop.” If literature is a vehicle for extending empathy and expanding human consciousness, how does reading literature from around the globe contribute to a “biosphere consciousness” (Rifkin), the belief that “each human being has responsibilities to every other” (Appiah)? Papers from a variety of perspectives are welcome. Benjamin Carson benjamin.carson@gmail.com
Zero World Literature: The Writing of the Outside: This panel envisions the possibility of a “zero-world” literature, i.e. one that extends beyond historical, political, and even cultural matrices. Thus, we pursue a de-territorialized imagination which constructs the experience of the radical elsewhere (exile, estrangement, border-hopping). Theorizing a zero-world literature will necessitate a captivating affective universe of dislocation, forgetting, transformation and outsider consciousness. Please submit a 200-300 word abstract to Jason Mohaghegh at jbm36@columbia.edu for consideration.

Women’s and Gender Studies

British and Anglophone: “Feeling In Common: Cultivating Sympathy in the Writings of George Eliot”; “Mothers of the Novel: Women’s Writing of the Eighteenth Century”; “‘The record of bitter moments’: Prison Writing as a Genre”; “Victorian Women Writers: Constructions of Masculinity”

Canadian: “Personal and Social Myth-making in the Work of Margaret Atwood”; “Women Writers and the Historical Novel in Canada”

Composition: “Not Just Another ‘F’ Word: Reviewing and Renewing Feminist Writing Pedagogies”

Cultural Studies and Film: “The Films of Kathryn Bigelow”; “Housewives of Millennial Television”; “Transnational Relations: Sexuality and Body Traffic across the Global Village”; “Visceral Subjects: Exploring Bodies, Exploring Knowledges”; “Wandering Women: Female Itinerancy on Film”

French and Francophone: “Exploration of Senses in Contemporary Francophone Women’s Autobiography”; “Les enjeux du « je » en jeu dans la littérature francophone”; “Love and Friendship in French and Francophone Women’s Fiction and Film”; “Rethinking Motherhood in French Literature and Film”

Italian: “Homosexual Women in Italian Literature, Cinema and other Media”; “Representations of Women and War in 20th Century Italian Literature and Film”; “Writing and Screening Images of Men. Masculinities in Italian Studies”; “Writing the Self: Italian Women Autobiography”

LGBTQ: “Narrating Queer Histories”; “Queer Counterpublic”

Russian/Eastern European: “Not Through My Skin: Sexuality and the Female Body in East-Central European Film”

Spanish/Portuguese: “Critical Discourses: Early Modern Spanish Literary Women”; “Crossing Borders and Performing Gender on the Spanish-Speaking Stage”; “Paradigmas de sexualidad en la escritura (re)escritura de los cuentos de hadas”; “Vertientes de la litertura fantastica en Hispanoamerica”; “Women Writing Spanish American Revolution(s)”

Advancing Gender Equality (Roundtable): This roundtable seeks proposals for 5-10 minute presentations exploring how literary representations of bisexuality may promote or advance gender equality.How does the challenging of unequal power relations by bisexual charaters advance gender equality? How do literary representations of bisexuality that support homosexuality or feminism or that challenge sexism promote gender equality? Please send 250 word proposals to Ines.Shaw@ncc.edu.
The American Short Story Cycle: A Gendered Genre?: An inter-related, yet self-sufficient collection of stories, the short story cycle, or composite novel, has appealed for over 100 years to a wide range of American authors. The logical assumption might be that the genre’s multiple perspectives, evolutions, and revolutions allow for greater gender performativity and fluidity, but is such an assumption accurate? Even though the terms seem interchangeable, can a genre or a gender be both cyclical and composite? Send a 300-word abstract to Lisa Day-Lindsey, Eastern Kentucky U at lisa.day@eku.edu
Best Practices in Women’s, Gender and Feminist Studies: This roundtable will present a sampling of best practices in Women’s Studies programs in the Academy. Participants will give special emphasis to historically successful programs at the undergrad and graduate levels, cutting-edge curricula, strategies to increase diversity, methods to increase program participation, proven pedagogical methods, global interactions, funding strategies, useful texts and contemporary scholarship. 500 word abstracts/CV to Suzanne Stewart-Steinberg, <Suzanne_Stewart-Steinberg@brown.edu>
The Classic Figure: Women in the Ancient World: This panel will explore the role and importance of women in the ancient world (e.g. Greece, Rome, etc.) as portrayed in archaic texts. We welcome all topics related to the depictio of women in ancient literary productions. Please submit your abstracts via email to Shelly Jansen, SUNY Binghamton, mjansen1@binghamton.edu.
Classical Women in Modern Literature and Media (Seminar): For this panel, we seek papers that investigate the issues that arise when modern literature and media appropriate the female figures of ancient Greece and Rome. This can focus on a single modern work’s depiction of a figure or figures, or how a given Classical character has evolved over time. Please email all submissions to ksburns@buffalo.edu.
Contemporary Black British Women’s Writing: Contemporary Black British Women’s Writing: While proposals on well-established authors are welcome, papers on less well-known contemporary Black British women writers in all genres are particularly encouraged. Focus may be on transnational connections, national identity, intersections of gender, ethnicity, sexuality, class, etc., and may raise other issues as well. Susan Alice Fischer, Medgar Evers College/CUNY, safcpw@earthlink.net
Contemporary Women’s Novels: The Changing Story?: To what extent can contemporary fiction by women and about women from different cultures can be brought together coherently for discussion? What has happened to such fiction as women’s political and social conditions have been challenged? This session will investigate how women’s fictional plotting has changed with globalization and what that contributes to the comparability/incomparability of these works. Email 300-500 word abstracts about recent women’s novels in a comparative / world literature teaching context to kwaldron@coa.edu.
Death, Dying and Dislocation: Transnational Grief Literature (Roundtable): Literature of grief traditionally transcends boundaries of time and place, focusing on archetypal experiences. But when we are dealing with loss in more than one locale, more concrete and culture-specific complications ensue. Papers should examine specific contemporary transnational writers’ depictions of coping with death, dying, and grief. Are the protagonists’ caught between two worlds or are they able to negotiate each one distinctively ? Texts can be fiction, memoir, or poetry ellen.dolgin@dc.edu.
The Devil Comes in Many Genders: Depictions of the Diabolical in Literature: This panel seeks interrogate changing representations of the gender of the devil. From its roots in religious texts to postmodern literature, devilish figures draw in listeners, readers, and viewers alike. Of particular interest to this panel are the relationships between devils and gender, the body, the individual, and society. Papers will enhance understanding of the relationship between devils in narrative and our understanding of gender, genre, seduction, and power. Please email 250-300 word abstracts (in an attachment) to mwm9@buffalo.edu.
Disordered Narratives: Psychological Illness in Women’s Life Writing: This panel will explore memoirs by women that describe efforts to cope with, undergo treatments for, or recover from psychological disorders. Issues of narrator reliability, the role of figurative means of describing psychological disorder in narrative, and the influence of mental illness on identity may be examined. Send a 300-500 word proposal as an email attachment to Dr. Georgia Kreiger, gkreiger@atlanticbb.net. Include institutional affiliation and contact information with proposal.
Donors and Helpers: Masculinity in Contemporary Fairy Tales: This panel explores masculinity in contemporary fairy tales through papers which support or refute the argument that the majority of feminist fairy tales subvert gender roles and place female characters into positions of power over males, in effect creating the potential for reverse sexism, which may culturally condition male behavior. Abstracts of 250-500 words should be sent to Susan Redington Bobby at bobbysu@wesley.edu.
Female Friendship in Local Color Fiction: This panel seeks papers on the New England local color writers, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Rose Terry Cooke, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward, Sarah Orne Jewett and Mary Wilkins Freeman, focusing primarily on the emotional support the women in their fiction provided one another, especially as they aged and how their lives were not bounded by the restrictions of either marriage or spinsterhood. Please send 300-500 word abstracts and brief biographical statements to Gail C. Keating - gck3@psu.edu
The Female Player in European Fiction (1780-1900): Gender Issues: Between 1780-1900, the ‘actress’ gradually gained ground: first of all, she finally upgraded the actor (in terms of wages and fame); and secondly she became a fictional heroine. We would like to investigate ‘novels with actresses’ and see how the gender issue is dealt with. Is the actress a female artist? or still a fallen woman? And is the writing of the actress ‘gendered,’ that is to say, can we notice differences between male and female writing about female players? Corinne François-Denève, UVSQ, corinne.francois-deneve@uvsq.fr
Feminist Alternative Media in the long 1970s: This panel seeks papers that examine how technological and political changes during the long 1970s enabled feminists to create and control alternative media. We welcome articles that discuss women’s video and film; feminist serial and ephemeral publications; women artists, alternative exhibition spaces, and art collectives; performance pieces; and feminist publishers and distributors. Please send 200-300 word abstracts and a brief CV to Karen Alexander at kalexander@signs.rutgers.edu.
Flânerie and the Rise of the Modern Urban Woman: This panel seeks papers that explore the multifaceted inter-relationship between female characters and the city from the fin de siècle to World War II. Although the panel’s primary focus will be on British, Irish, and North American texts, I would also be interested in papers that extend this discussion to other areas of the globe. Please send a 300-word abstract and brief bio to Elizabeth Foley O’Connor (lizfoley@gmail.com).
Gender & Healing: Utilizing Films for the Feminist Classroom (Roundtable): Taking a multimedia approach to teaching literature, this roundtable covers texts about gender and healing. Presenters will speak on teaching texts (film, lit, electronic) on gender and healing. Send 300 word abstracts to Deanna Utroske at deannautroske@gmail.com with ‘Gender & Healing’ in subject line.
Global Feminist Science/Speculative Fictions Advance Social Change: Expanding the conversation among global feminist science/speculative fictions, this panel will discuss what (social, political, cultural, etc.) changes these literatures envision; how these visions are distinct and similar across national boundaries; and what we can learn from each other to better foster change through these literatures in our global and local spaces. Send 400 word abstracts or complete papers with abstracts as Word attachments to Deanna Utroske at deannautroske@gmail.com with “feminist sf submission” in the subject line.
Interdisciplinary Studies and Women Modernists: This panel explores interdisciplinary inquiry and its relationship to gender in modernism. How did non-literary disciplines influence the articulation of gender in the work of writers in this period? What lenses might the visual, aural, perfomative, sciences or social sciences provide for reading gender in literary modernism? Finally, what are the implications of such interdisciplinary or intermedia work for pedagogy and scholarship? Please submit 300-word abstracts to Laurel Harris, Graduate Center, CUNY, at laurel_e_harris@yahoo.com.
The Loudest Voice: Jewish American Women’s Literature: Is there a common, traceable voice in the writing of Jewish American women writers? This panel seeks papers that explore Jewish American women’s writing from the early 20th century to now and may include poets, fiction and non-fiction authors, and comic writers/artists. Papers can address individual authors, comparisons of works by several women, or comparisons across generations. What does this writing tell us about how Jewish identity has been conceived over the past century? Send 250-500 word abstracts to Tahneer Oksman, toksman@hotmail.com.
Narrating the Public Self: YouTube, Facebook, and Contemporary Feminism: This panel investigates the ideological work being done by public feminist intellectuals in the age of YouTube and Facebook. How have new social media configurations altered the intellectual practice of feminist advocacy? Topics and/or critical paradigms can include, but are certainly not limited to: feminism, memoir, politics, class, gender, critical race/reception/queer theory, literature, and poetry. Send 1-page abstract and brief bio as Word attachment to Rebecca Williams, rebelwill7@gmail.com, with “NEMLA” in subject line.
The Outsider Within: Women as Contingent Faculty in the Academy (Roundtable): This roundtable will explore the experiences of women in the academy who are teaching part time and off the tenure track. We will explore the discourse surrounding women’s work, the role of agency in women who are contingent faculty, and women’s status in higher education. The 3-6 participants in this session will give informal presentations (5-10 minutes) with the remainder of the session given to a conversation between the participants and the audience. Submit a 1-page abstract to Rhonda Filipan at Kent State University: rfilipan@kent.edu
The Power of Marginal Spaces in the Works of Carmen Martin Gaite: In the works of Carmen Martín Gaite, how do marginal spaces empower or debilitate? How do they figure in her ideas about history and feminism, aesthetics and politics? How can her ideas about marginality reposition her within a feminist canon from which she has been mostly excluded? Range of critical/theoretical approaches welcome. Send abstracts (500 words) for 15-minute papers to Elizabeth.Huergo@montgomerycollege.edu.
Representations of Gendered Transnational Identity in Contemporary Literature: Sponsored by the Women’s & Gender Studies Caucus. This year’s panel invites papers which analyze the ways that writers negotiate nationally-multiple, gendered identities. Writers such as Julia Alvarez, Sherman Alexie, and Jhumpa Lahiri demonstrate the ways that writing may vary greatly in response to the intersection of gender and transnational identity. Papers may consider any relevant writer or genre. Please submit 250-500 word abstracts to Kirsten Bartholomew Ortega at kortega@uccs.edu
Rethinking Second & Third Wave Feminisms (Roundtable): This rountable seeks to discuss what is and can be the relationship between second and third wave feminisms. Participants can explore a range of related questions, such as: What has been the relationship between the two? What needs to change in order for a productive relationship between the two?; What is currently problematic between the two?, and How have both the generational and wave metaphors made an alliance between the two difficult? Please send inquiries or 250-500 word abstracts to D. Lynn O’Brien Hallstein, lhallst@bu.edu
Simon de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex: Newly Translated and Rediscovered (Roundtable): Sixty years after its initial publication, Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex has been newly translated and unabridged for the first time in English. How does this new translation provide fresh insights into this canonical text? How might it influence women’s studies today? This roundtable panel invites abstracts on the evaluation of de Beauvoir’s work and on the impact of the new translation on feminism and gender studies. Send abstracts in body of email to df@berkeleycollege.edu, with ‘The Second Sex’ in subject line.
Transnational Women’s Writing in 20th-century Europe: Taking Natalie Clifford Barney’s “Academy of Women” as an example of what Tirza Latimer characterizes as “women converging in Paris between the wars to establish the terms of on-going debates about representation, sexuality, and the politics of gender,” this panel will explore works written by women in Barney’s circle or works written within the broader context of transnational women’s writing in twentieth-century Paris. Please send 200-300 word abstracts and a CV to Chelsea Ray @ chelsea.d.ray@maine.edu.
We’re plotting our evil, feminist agenda: Women’s Documentaries: This panel will examine women’s documentaries, which often push the boundaries of reporting truth or capturing reality, as these works are often unconventional and hybrid in their form and content. Topics for the panel include, but are not limited to: travelogues, photo essays, scrapbooks, cookbooks, war journalism, letters, anthologies, graphic novels, autobiography, films, mixed media projects, etc. Please send inquiries or 250-500 word abstracts (as MSWord attachments) to Magdalena Bogacka, mbogacka@gc.cuny.edu.
When Motherhood Studies Meets Other Disciplines: This panel explores how feminist maternal scholarship or the study of motherhood challenges, changes, and/or supports other disciplines, theories, perspectives, and institutional policies, particularly in regard to women and professing. Topics can include: What institutional policies must change to accommodate mothers lives? How does motherhood studies challenge current intellectual theories? How does motherhood studies support other theories? Please send inquiries or 250-500 word abstracts to D. Lynn O’Brien Hallstein, lhallst@bu.edu
Women Writers and Psychoanalysis: This session is seeking paper submissions for a panel on American women writers’ responses to Freud. Submissions should address one of the following subjects: Revisions of Freudian texts; Alternatives to the Freudian model of psychoanalytic practice; Responses to Freud as a cultural figure; Writing psychoanalysis through form, style, and technique. Please email submissions to Kristina Marie Darling, KristinaMarieDarling@yahoo.com

World Literatures (non-European)

French and Francophone: “Arab Francophone Writers and the Arabo-Islamic Traditions”; “The Francophone African Intellectual”

Transnational Literatures: “What is ‘World Literature’?”

Women’s and Gender Studies: “Contemporary Women’s Novels: The Changing Story?”

Arabic Studies: Challenges and Successes (Roundtable): Participants will share ways they have overcome difficulties in creating and maintaining a program in a rarer language such as Arabic. They will share resources pertaining to teaching strategies, curriculum, resources of all kinds, classroom materials, using available texts or creating new ones to fit the needs of the program, cross-discipline research, and integration of study abroad experiences into the curriculum. Lora Lunt <luntlg@potsdam.edu>
Contemporary Fiction from the Middle East: This panel explores contemporary fiction from the Middle East. Topics may include: issues around translation and translatability, the Arabic novel as a particular genre of fiction, immigration as a trope, representations of the divine and the supernatural. We will ask what makes this body of fiction particular and of importance both at home and in the world, as well as what critical approaches exist, in Arabic as well as in translation.Please send 250-word abstracts to Sally Gomaa, sally.gomaa@salve.edu
Growing Up in China: the Coming of Age in Chinese Literature: How do Chinese literary texts conceptualize the inevitable changes and adjustments inherent in life’s formative years? This panel will explore the themes of initiation, growth, and rites of passage by looking at how Chinese narratives wrestle with biological, psychological and cultural changes for young women and men in literature both before and after the introduction of the Western notion of “youth” as a distinct and privileged metamorphosis. Please send 250 word abstracts to I-Hsien Wu ihsienwu.chineselit@gmail.com.
Investigating the Scope of Persian/Iranian Literatures: Board-Sponsored. This panel welcomes papers on any aspect of Persian/Iranian literature, of any time period, defined to include not only work written in Iran and works in translation, but also work written in Persian by Iranian writers in exile, in English by Iranian American writers, in French (Marjane Satrapi) and/or in any other language in which people of Iranian descent choose to write. Please submit 250-300 word proposals to Richard Jeffrey Newman at richard.newman@ncc.edu
Planetary Lyricism in Modern Chinese Poetry: China is now facing an unprecedented environmental crisis and ecological deterioration as a result of unchecked economic development over the past several decades. This panel seeks to examine how modern and contemporary Chinese poetry engages with environmental issues and concerns, explores the relationship between human beings and nature, challenges the ideology of anthropocentrism, and promotes ecocentric consciousness. Jiayin Mi <mi@tcnj.edu>
Teaching Culture of Less-Commonly Taught Languages: Cultural literacy (CL) is an important foundation for students to develop to learn about target language society’s values, traditions and experiences. It is an asset for other cultural studies courses related to the cultures of the target language. This panel examines how CL is incorporated into the teaching of LCTLs in the US academy. The panel seeks to demonstrate that culture provides a productive terrain for teaching grammar communicatively according to the standards set by ACTFL. Abstracts to Sunil Kumar Bhatt skumarbh@rci.rutgers.edu.

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