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 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]

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]

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]

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]