I am proposing a special session at MLA 2024 on “Political Oratory and African American Literature.”  Papers will examine speeches by elected officials as contributions to African American literary discourse.   Please email 300-word abstracts to matthewcalihman@missouristate.edu by March 13.

Matthew Calihman, Professor of English, Missouri S…[Read more]

2024 marks the centennial of the Surrealist Manifesto. Roundtable participants will examine the conceptual, verbal, and formal tools and strategies at stake in this preeminent artistic and critical stance in 20th-century French studies. They will explore the evolving ways in which surrealism still manifests in today’s cultural and literary imagina…[Read more]

Recent work in book history, bibliography, and media studies has expanded definitions of “the book” and turned attention to materiality more broadly. Eighteenth-century studies in particular has seen an interest in non-print media, queer and trans book history, speculative archives, and critical making, among other approaches. This panel seeks con…[Read more]

An op-ed article I co-wrote with Latinx Studies colleagues David J. Vázquez and Magdalena L. Barrera was just published in Salon. Check it out!

“What the New York Times gets wrong about the “American Dirt” controversy: Who gets to wield the power of representation might be important to columnist Pamela Paul, but it’s a…[Read more]

What is a life worth living?Speculative Fiction and Eternal Life Despite numerous post-apocalyptic storylines, many science fiction texts are a celebration of life and seek ways of prolonging it, whether artificially or by providing warnings against our current behavior in order to preserve the life that already exists. The fact that death and…[Read more]

Every year, Forum executive committees appoint one new member annually to their committees. This year, the Race and Ethnicity Studies Forum executive committee seeks self-nominations and suggestions for a new committee member from our membership so as to allow for broad participation. Our hope is that broad participation will ensure diversity of…[Read more]

The Cognitive and Affect Studies forum invites papers that discuss vital signs in literature for a guaranteed session at the 2024 MLA. Please submit a 250-word abstract and short bio to mhulstyn@stanford.edu by 15 March.

We welcome nominations from our membership. Please feel free to email  ylee@wellesley.edu before Jan. 17, 2023.

Hello — Please email me with any suggestions you may have for people to serve on the forum executive Committee for CLCS Romanticism & 19th Century. (Every year needs new names so even if someone is not considered for this year, it’s good for us to have several names in mind.)  My email: dwhite2@emory.edu  Thanks!

All: if you would like to suggest yourself or another person as a forum executive committee member, there is still time to do so (and I do encourage you to do so!) Please send an email directly to me, oldfather@ulm.edu , by the end of this week (Friday).

All: if you would like to suggest yourself or another person as a forum executive committee member, there is still time to do so (and I do encourage you to do so!) Please send an email directly to me, oldfather@ulm.edu , by the end of this week (Friday).

I hope everyone will attend our forum’s sponsored sessions this year at MLA2023! Here is a convenient link to all three in the convention program: https://mla.confex.com/mla/2023/meetingapp.cgi/Symposium/2149

We have three very different sessions this year. First up, on Thursday, is a face-to-face session exploring neurodiverse modes of literary…[Read more]