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]

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]

The journal Comparative Literature Studies invites proposals for a special issue titled “Redesigning Modernities Part II,” edited by Waïl Hassan (U of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) and Maria Truglio (Penn State U). The issue solicits inquiries into the divergences, inequalities, and commonalities that define “modernity” in different parts of the w…[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]

“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]