The Robert Frost Society will be hosting a panel at the 2016 MLA Convention to be held in Austin, TX from January 7th-10th, 2016.   In accordance with the announced theme of the meeting, “Literature and Its Publics: Past, Present, and Future,” we invite papers that explore the relationship between Frost, the public, and the artistic community of…[Read more]

Transnational Memories: 9/11 and South Asians (guaranteed panel)

Papers that engage with racial injury, anger, trauma, and grief of South Asians in post-9/11 US, Canada and Britain; representations of 9/11 in fiction, cinema, memoirs, etc. produced in South Asia and in the West; surveillance and securitization in South Asia and in the W…[Read more]

The deadline for proposals about “The Oldest Profession: Teaching and Aging” has been extended to 3/15/15. The panel, co-sponsored by the Age Studies Forum and Teaching in the Profession Forums will take place at the annual convention of the Modern Language Association, in Austin, Texas January 7-10, 2016.

What difference does age make in what we…[Read more]

This Bridge Called My Back
In honor of This Bridge’s 35th anniversary, we invite engagements with its historical impact, attendant contexts, and continuing salience.  Brief CV & 300-word abstracts by 15 March 2015 to Laura Halperin lhalperi@email.unc.edu and Ruby Tapia rtapia@umich.edu.

Seeking papers that explore the distinct approaches, perspectives, and discourses of women writers as intellectuals writing for modern reading publics. Possible subjects include Woolf, Lessing, Beauvoir, Hansberry, Sontag, Morrison, Atwood, Francine Prose, Zadie Smith, Melissa Harris-Perry, and others. 300-word abstracts and brief CV by 15 March…[Read more]

“After Transnational American Studies” (MLA 2016): What does it mean to come after Transnational American Studies? Papers may consider transnationality, Americanity, globality, planetarity, empire, and/or the anthropocene. 250-word abstracts by 15 March 2015 to Abby Goode (abby.l.goode@gmail.com).

***SPECIAL OFFER***

Studies in American Humor has additional copies of its landmark, jumbo special MAD issue (n.s. 3, no 30, fall 2014) with guest coeditor John Bird—

“MAD MAGAZINE AND ITS LEGACIES”

a splendiferous 224 pp. issue devoted to one of the most important American comic innovations of all time

For new members, or members who were…[Read more]

This panel will consider the audiences for Bukowski’s oeuvre and public self in conversation with the social milieus of his fictional counterpart, Chinaski. Specific topics panelists might explore include, but are not limited to:

The varying nature of Bukowski’s reception across time and space (his contemporary European reception, for instance,…[Read more]

CFP: MLA Panels for 2016 – Forum on Global Arab and Arab American Literature:

Dear Friends,

The Global Arab and Arab American MLA Forum invites proposals for the following two panels at the MLA convention in Austin, Texas (Jan 7-10, 2016):

Global Arab Texts and their Publics

Displaced writers. Deterritorialized texts. How do recent Arab é…[Read more]

CFP: MLA Panels for 2016 – Forum on Global Arab and Arab American Literature:

Dear Friends,

The Global Arab and Arab American MLA Forum invites proposals for the following two panels at the MLA convention in Austin, Texas (Jan 7-10, 2016):

1. Global Arab Texts and their Publics

Displaced writers. Deterritorialized texts. How do recent Arab é…[Read more]

In the wake of the Delegate Assembly’s discussion of the boycott of Israeli academic institutions at MLA 2015, a DA member sent the following important queries regarding the scope and practice of the boycott. Some MLA Members for Justice in Palestine reply to her questions here. It’s a long document, but provides a concrete sense what is implied (…[Read more]

Call for Papers for a guaranteed panel at the Modern Language Association

(MLA) Annual Convention, 7-10 Jan. 2016, in Austin.

Satire and the Editorial Cartoon

Ever since the days of William Hogarth and his brand of pictorial satire, expressing an opinion on the politics of the day in print demanded a combination of humor, hyperbole, and c…[Read more]

“Citizenship and Social Death”

Explorations in literature and film of “social death” (Orlando Paterson, Jared Sexton) in relation to issues of citizenship and quality of life for all ethnic groups. 300 word abstract, one page CVs by March 8.

Stephen Knadler (knadlers@spelman.edu) and Amritjit Singh (singha@ohio.edu)

“Archival Legibility an…[Read more]

Special Session: MLA 2016

The Lore and Lure of the Academic Job Market

This roundtable will consider how discipline-specific “lore” continually lures graduate students, contingent faculty, and even full-time faculty into an already overcrowded market. This panel seeks to initiate discussions about the psychodynamics of job candidacy in dis…[Read more]

From Texas to Florida, the Dirty Coast shifts, contains, nurtures, kills. Abstracts and brief bio on the ecologies, economies, or peoples making this coast dirty and beautiful, alluring and disgusting. All media. By 10 March 2015. To Sharon O’Dair, sodair@ua.edu.

CFP: Special session proposal for the 2016 Modern Language Association convention in Austin, TX.

“Circulating Notions of TB”

Conference papers invited that examine the representation of patients’ experiences with tuberculosis in imaginative, digital, and other texts.

How do these narratives, metaphors, or images intersect with–or even active…[Read more]

Southern United States Forum (formerly the Southern Literature Discussion Group) at MLA 2016

Sounds of the South

When we listen to the South, what do we hear?

Taking advantage of the MLA Convention’s 2016 visit to Austin, the live music capital of the world, the Southern United States Forum is organizing a panel that aims to bring together…[Read more]

Southern United States Forum (formerly the Southern Literature Discussion Group) at MLA 2016

Sounds of the South

When we listen to the South, what do we hear?

Taking advantage of the MLA Convention’s 2016 visit to Austin, the live music capital of the world, the Southern United States Forum is organizing a panel that aims to bring together…[Read more]