The non-profit digital scholarly database The Literary Encyclopedia was founded in 1998 to provide a scholarly online resource for university-level teaching and research. 

We are in the process of expanding our offerings in the field of African American Literature and Culture.  

We’re interested in commissioning reference articles (2,000…[Read more]

Please consider submitting a proposal to one of the three panels sponsored by LLC 17th-Century English:

1. Open Topic Seventeenth-Century Literature

We seek new work on any topic in non-dramatic British literature of the seventeenth century. All approaches/methodologies are welcomed. 250-word abstracts. Deadline for submissions: Tuesday, 15…[Read more]

The Association of Departments and Programs of Comparative Literature invites submissions for its guaranteed MLA session: “Adapting Digital Resources for Global and Comparative Studies”

The COVID-19 pandemic forced professors to rely on technology to teach online.  This session aims to share innovative methodologies used for teaching grad…[Read more]

The Comedia Connection: England and Spain (Co-Sponsored with CLCS Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies, competitive panel, not guaranteed) 

This panel explores new critical approaches to theatrical relations between Spain & England. Abstracts that take a comparative approach to the study of the Spanish Golden Age Comedia & plays by…[Read more]

Passages of Water and Labor Cultures of the Coastal South and the Caribbean

In Edwidge Danticat’s short story “Without Inspection,” an undocumented Haitian immigrant, Arnold, dies from unsafe working conditions at a construction site in south Florida. In the news coverage about the event, the construction company and developer release a state…[Read more]

Disability and Public Health in the U.S. South 

A key part of colonizing in the U.S. South depended on the rhetoric of health, such as Ponce de Leon’s mythical fountain of youth and nineteenth-century boosterism claiming Florida as the “winter sanitarium of the country” (qtd in Knight 5). The semi-tropical warmth of the South invited justif…[Read more]

The Sounds of Humor

The Drama and Performance Forum and the Sound Studies Forum of the Modern Language Association (MLA) announce a co-sponsored session entitled “The Sounds of Humor” to be held at the MLA Convention in San Francisco, CA from January 5-8, 2023. What does humor sound like? Sounds tend to play an important role in performances inte…[Read more]

Race, Gender, and Consent in the Global Early Modern

Guaranteed roundtable on race, gender, and consent in the prose, poetry, and drama of the 16th and 17th centuries. How do the intersections of these terms illuminate cultural formations, social privileges, and legal rights? Comparative and transnational perspectives especially welcome. Brief CV…[Read more]

The Drama and Performance Forum solicits paper proposals for two guaranteed sessions at MLA 2023 in San Francisco:

Humor and Humorlessness before 1900  From the medieval period to the nineteenth century the concept of humor shifted from an aspect of human physiology, to the eccentric qualities of individuals or comic characters, to a mode of…[Read more]

CHEAP’ NATURE, ‘CHEAP’ LABOR, AND THE EARLY MODERN CAPITALOCENE
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Examining early modern/colonial literary, ethical, ecological reflections on the European capitalist violent expansion in search of ‘cheap’ nature and labor inaugurating the capitalocene era and emerging notions of nature and the human. One page abstracts…[Read more]

Guaranteed Session: Infinite Variety? Antony and Cleopatra, Then and Now 

This is a call for papers on Antony and Cleopatra. we are open to a diverse array of critical interests, including but not limited to: premodern critical race studies, histories of empire and racial capitalism, early modern trans and sexuality studies, disability studies,…[Read more]

“New Rules” (Guaranteed roundtable sponsored by CLCS Renaissance and Early Modern)

Proposed new guidelines for conducting research, sharing work, and supporting the profession as we address the realities of systemic social inequity, climate change, the expansion of the adjunct labor force, and drastic shifts in institutional support for the…[Read more]