Please attend my special session at the 2016 MLA, Austin, TX: Conjuring Multi-Ethnic Futures and consider my new book, BLUE SKY FOR BLACK AMERICA,  for your classes.  Help your students connect with the political system by codifying their own images of the future.

Special Issue for Postcolonial Text

CFP: Translated Worlds: History, Diaspora, South Asia–Special Issue

(In Honour and Memory of Professor Chelva Kanaganayakam)

In honour of a dear mentor, teacher, and scholar–Professor Chelva Kanaganayakam–who recently passed away, we (former students of Prof. Kanaganayakam’s) will be editing and compil…[Read more]

Toni Morrison CFP

We are seeking and welcome perspectives from a variety of disciplines, historical, comparative, and cross-cultural, for a collection of essays entitled Toni Morrison and Mothering/Motherhood. In her vast body of work, fiction and non-fiction, Toni Morrison explores and critiques American/African American culture. While…[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 w…[Read more]

Dear Members of the Teaching of Literature group,

Please consider submitting an abstract for our special session, “Teaching Memory Studies.” Here’s the full CFP:

Teaching Memory Studies

Integrating studies of memory and literature: e.g. memory as metaphor, personal or collective practice, neuroscience, narrative hindsight, cinematic flash…[Read more]

Proposals invited for MLA roundtable session on innovative approaches to teaching literature surveys. Papers may encompass the practical (e.g., syllabus design, teaching strategies, assignments/assessment), the institutional (i.e., ways of introducing curricular innovation), and/or the theoretical (i.e., on place of the survey course in our…[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.

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]

“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]

“Literature and the Public Sphere: Connecting Classroom and Community”

The focus of this session is on the interconnections, both actual and possible, between what we teach in the literature classroom and the world beyond that classroom. This can mean looking at literature that engages public events/ideas/issues, as well as exploring the ways lit…[Read more]

A call for papers for the 2016 convention now up at mla.org:

Naming the 18th Century. What’s at stake in naming this period “long” (1660-1830), “short” (1715-1789), early modern, Enlightenment (etc.)? What’s its role in the new MLA forum structure? 300-word abstracts by 15 March 2015 to Dustin D. Stewart (dustin.d.stewart@gmail.com) and Joshua…[Read more]

Please consider joining the new commons group MLA Members for Justice in Palestine. http://mla.hcommons-staging.org/…/mla-members-for-justice-in-palest…/ …

As well, we have a Facebook page by the same name, that now has 655 members and we’d like it to reach 1000:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/MLAM4JP/

Please consider joining these sites to bu…[Read more]

Please consider joining the new commons group MLA Members for Justice in Palestine. http://mla.hcommons-staging.org/…/mla-members-for-justice-in-palest…/ …

As well, it would be great if you want to join the Facebook page by the same name:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/MLAM4JP/

These are spaces to build support for a resolution on Acade…[Read more]

Please consider joining the new commons group MLA Members for Justice in Palestine. http://mla.hcommons-staging.org/…/mla-members-for-justice-in-palest…/ …

As well, it would be great if you’d like to  join the Facebook page set up for this group, that has the same name:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/MLAM4JP/

After more than 3 hours of commit…[Read more]

There will be a #BlackLivesMatter solidarity action at MLA on FRI at 1:30PM. Please assemble at 1:30 in Ballroom D, on the first floor (not ground floor) of the convention center.

We plan to have speakers and an open mic there, and then march outside.

Participants without MLA badges can access Ballroom D through the south entrance. We will have…[Read more]

Mentoring isn’t just for students. Great advice from Joycelyn Moody. Let’s keep the conversation going at #MLA15!  http://bit.ly/1wPU6y9

Is there one? Can’t find anything in the online program.

Abstracts below:

Friday, 9 January

Reading Memory: Approaches to Teaching the Memoir

10:15–11:30 a.m., West 210, VCC West

Program arranged by the Community College Humanities Association

Presiding: Stacey Lee Donohue, Central Oregon Community Coll.

“Photo-graphics: Mediating Memory in Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home,” David Bahr, Borough of Man…[Read more]