Paul Megna’s paper for the Middle English Forum at MLA 2022 invoked a Public Books piece by Irina Dumitrescu in order to prompt contemporary medievalists to ponder the events of 1/6/2021. How might 1/6/2021 cause us to reconsider the scholarly lenses through which we have typically interpreted the events of Rising of 1381 and their literary ma…[Read more]

Medieval studies is in a moment in which it is re-examining the long-held categories that have traditionally defined its boundaries. As this reconceptualization of the field progresses, Trans Studies offers a number of scholarly methodologies and insights that are changing the way medievalists consider their field and, more specifically, Trans…[Read more]

This session seeks to build upon the growing appreciation for the complex and multifarious discursive engagements between late medieval English literary texts and Islamicate or Persianate culture, society, language, or literature. Recognizing that such engagements include much more than direct literary representations of the individual Islamicate…[Read more]

Members of the Language Theory group,

The Call for Papers topics for the 2023 MLA Annual Convention have been posted here: https://mla.confex.com/mla/2023/webprogrampreliminary/Session13763.html

Please consider submitting a paper proposal for one of the topics, and please circulate them to interested colleagues!

The deadline for submissions is…[Read more]

The Chaucer Forum warmly invites submissions for our MLA 2023 (San Francisco, January 5-8) sessions:

Chaucer’s Ornamentalism and Gimmickry

This roundtable session brings Anne Anlin Cheng’s concept of ornamentalism and Sianne Ngai’s work on the gimmick into conversation with Chaucer’s work. For instance, in The Squire’s Tale, Canacee’s…[Read more]

How are various new media forms (e.g. apps, memes, gaming avatars, Webcast rites) creating performative representations of religion?  200-word proposals by March 15.  Manisha Basu, U of Illinois, Urbana (mbasu@illinois.edu ) Adrienne Brown, U of Chicago (adrienneb@uchicago.edu ).

More information: How have visual digital forms supplemented r…[Read more]

How do cleric-sleuths or other religious detective figures (e.g., Cadfael, Granchester, Father Brown, etc.)  navigate/challenge religion alongside police or state-sponsored will-to-knowledge? 200-word proposal to mbasu@illinois.edu by March 10.

More information: From G.K. Chesterton’s ‘Father Brown’ to Ellis Peters’ Brother Cadfael, from Harry…[Read more]

Memorialization, “entering the canon,” and the influence of politics, race, class, or gender. Who decides on the people, texts, places, dates, etc. selected to be commemorated, studied, and/or enshrined? Theorists such as Lonergan, Bourdieu, Girard, and Agamben have explored “sacralization” as a process of making holy or sacred that can inv…[Read more]

Greetings to the membership of LSL Linguistics and Literature!

Each year our Executive Committee says farewell to its longest-serving member and welcomes a new one.  The time has come (the Walrus said) for us to appoint a new EC member who would begin their service in January 2023. Our appointment form is due in one week, and we seek…[Read more]

To the TM Language Theory Group membership: we invite nominations—and self-nominations—to join the Executive Committee of the TM Language Theory group. Nominations would be for the coming year going forward, for the standard 5-year cycle of Executive Committee activity. This primarily involves determining, advertising, and selecting the topics and…[Read more]