2011 CFP: American

Cultural Studies and Film: “What a ‘Man’’s Gotta Do: (Re)Defining Duty of Post-Feminist Action Heroes”

German: “Cultural and Political Dislocation and Reorientation in United Germany”; “Rap Music’s Sophisticated Dialogues with Society”

LGBTQ: “Prove It On Me: Ambivalent Lesbian Representation in the Harlem Renaissance”; “(Re)Imagining Expatriates: Queer Transnationalisms in American Literature”

Pedagogy: “Problem Based Learning: Strategies, Struggles, and Successes”

Theory and Literary Criticism: “Uncovering the Tradition of Vitalism in 20th Century Literature”

Transnational Literatures: “Global Magical Realisms and Speculative Fiction”; “Globalization and the Americas: Challenging Categories of Literary Production”

Women’s and Gender Studies: “Disordered Narratives: Psychological Illness in Women’s Life Writing”; “The Loudest Voice: Jewish American Women’s Literature”; “Rethinking Second & Third Wave Feminisms”; “When Motherhood Studies Meets Other Disciplines”

20th Century Sentimentalism: This panel examines sentimentality in 20th century American literature. How do 20th century authors utilize 19th century modes of sentimentalism? How do 20th century understandings of gender, queerness, and class alter uses of sentimentality? Given the historical appropriation of sentimentalism by African-American male and female writers, papers that consider sentimentalism and race are also strongly encouraged. Please send name, academic affiliation, a brief biography, and a 250-500 word abstract to Jenn Williamson (jwilliamson@unc.edu).
Adoption in Contemporary Literature and Culture (Roundtable): This roundtable seeks papers that explore representations of adoption in contemporary literature and popular culture. How do current discussions and representations of adoption make this once secret institution such a public one? How do issues of race, class, and multiracial identity inform these representations? Please submit 250-500 word abstracts to Nicole L.B. Furlonge at nlfurlonge@gmail.com.
Affect and Periodization: Rethinking the Long 19th Century: This panel will investigate increasing interest in affect by examining the intersection of Early and post-Civil War American literature. The panel will consider how theorizing affect might replace, subvert, or change the boundaries of periodization by using the Civil War boundary dividing the “long nineteenth-century.” We seek papers that address these issues through readings of relevant literary or theoretical texts. E-mail proposals to Justin Rogers Cooper (justinrogerscooper@gmail.com) or Neil Meyer (nmeyer@gc.cuny.edu).
American Fiction Reflecting Global Ecological Concerns: This panel seeks papers that explore the salient connection between contemporary American fiction and the earth’s current environmental crisis. Submissions are invited that interrogate the immediacy of a fictional world that serves as a microcosm for our 21st century world with its global ecological concerns. Send 300-word abstracts to Dr. Linda Byrd Cook, Sam Houston State University, via e-mail: LindaCook@shsu.edu.
American Horror: Gothic Strategies in Ante-bellum Discourses: This panel will consider uses of Gothic strategies in critiques of civil abuses in ante-bellum America. We welcome papers that discover and analyze instances in which writers turn to Gothic tropes to fully delineate the horrors of public institutions, including slavery and mental asylums. Please send detailed proposals to Ruth Bienstock Anolik, ruth.anolik@villanova.edu.
American Literary Tourism: From visits to the grave of the fictional eighteenth-century Charlotte Temple, to the restoration of Salem’s House of the Seven Gables at the turn of the century, to competing twentieth-century Faulkner Festivals, literary tourism is ingrained in American culture. We invite submissions from scholars interested in any aspect of American literary tourism, from the creation and maintenance of sites and events, to interpretations and experiences of them, and beyond. Send 300-500 word proposals and brief bio/CV to Jennifer Harris (jharris@mta.ca).
Blowing Up America: Amiri Baraka’s Revolutionary Theatre: This panel seeks papers that investigate the role of revolution deriving from Amiri Baraka’s 1965 essay, “The Revolutionary Theatre,” emphasizing primarily Baraka’s political writing and his stage drama. Papers engaging Marxist theory are especially welcome, since Baraka has come to claim Marxism as significant in his philosophical development. Please submit 250-word abstracts to Dr. Donald Gagnon at GagnonD@wcsu.edu
Brooklyn Poetics: From the rough-and-tumble streets of Greenpoint to the refined brownstones of Brooklyn Heights, poets have lived in, looked across the river toward, complained about, and extolled the virtues of, Brooklyn. This panel will argue for the existence of a poetics of Brooklyn grounded in the area’s rich cultural heritage and the ordinary/extraordinary experiences of those people who live their lives on “the other side” of the Brooklyn Bridge. Send abstracts to Wendy Galgan, wgalgan@stfranciscollege.edu.
Chicas, Nǚhái, Batang babae: Girlhood in Contemporary Ethnic American Literature: This panel will examine representations of girlhood in Ethnic American literature (1980-present) intended for adolescent or adult audiences. Topics of the panel include, but are not limited to: parent-daughter relationships, sexual initiation and identity, girls and violence/abuse, girls and nation, sisterhood, girls and beauty, friends and enemies, religion, girls and work. Papers on Asian American, Latina, or Native American literature are especially welcome. Please submit 250-500 word abstracts to Christa Baiada at cbaiada@bmcc.cuny.edu.
The Cold War as an American Cultural Dominant, 1945-1955: This panel seeks papers that theorize the early years of the Cold War via cultural work produced between 1945-1955 and encourages discussions that examine the ways postwar American culture figures aspects of the Cold War. Here, American culture includes literature, film, music, and other forms of artistic expression, and aspects of the Cold War include domestic and international concerns. Please send 250-word abstracts to Michael Mayne, mayne@ufl.edu, with ‘NeMLA abstract’ in the subject line.
Crowd Forms in American Literature: From lynch mobs, angry strikers, and irrational consumers, collectives in American literature are often represented, in accordance with popular 19th-century views, as irrational, labile, and primitive. Recent theorists of collective subjectivities, however, have begun to question this disparaging view. This panel seeks to explore works by American authors that challenge the traditional, reactionary understanding of crowds, audiences, publics, and collectives. Send 300 word abstracts to Phillip Mahoney at pmahoney@temple.edu.
Discourse on Democratic Identity & Freedom: Douglass, Wright, Ellison, Baldwin: This panel invites papers which will address the possibility of change through African American discourse on democratic identity. How did Frederic Douglass, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin and Richard Wright embody the extent and knowledge of “principles of democracy and democratic identity” in their writing? Did their work(s)impact the evolution of novel forms of discourse on American democratic identity? Please submit 300-500 word abstracts to Nilgün Anadolu-Okur, nilgun.okur@gmail.com
The Early Black Atlantic: African Muslims and African Diasporic Narratives: This panel will examine early narratives by Diasporic Africans as part of the conception of the Black Atlantic. Papers will explore paradigms for reading eighteenth-century African Diasporic narratives, which challenge Western cultural, religious, and social values. Papers which employ African-centered theoretical frames are highly encouraged. Please send a 250-500 word abstract to Fran L. Lassiter (flassite@mc3.edu). Also include your name, academic affiliation, a brief biography, and contact information.
Family Formations in Contemporary Multiethnic American Literature: In contrast to the “traditional” nuclear family, contemporary multiethnic American authors have often depicted the family unit as destabilized, challenged, or redefined by conflicting demands of race, ethnicity, nation, capitalism, patriarchy, labor, slavery, etc. This panel invites papers that explore how the family unit and the individual roles of “father,” “mother,” and “child” are complicated by such factors; we will also consider how “alternative” and “extended” families are created in these works. Melissa Dennihy at mdennihy@gmail.com.
The Family in Contemporary Drama: This session will explore topics about the family in contemporary American drama. Papers could address role changes, change in form, challenges to nuclear family, parenting, children, generational conflict, dysfunction, modes of interaction, and more. This panel will assess the health of the family by looking at its representation on the contemporary stage. Send abstracts to Elizabeth Fifer at ef00@lehigh.edu.
Feeling Wrong: Postbellum Adaptations of Sentimental Literary Conventions: This panel examines ways 19th century women after the Civil War adapt the literary conventions of Sentimentalism to challenge assumptions central to Sentimental culture. Papers might address the ideas of individual postbellum authors, particular literary conventions, an assumption’s adaptation across time, or other ways message and medium conflict in the writing of postbellum women working with and against antebellum Sentimental conventions. Email 300 to 500 word abstracts to Michael Cadwallader at cadwallader@unc.edu.
Fire and Rust Remembered: Legacies of the Urban Crisis in Contemporary Culture: This panel will explore how recent literature, film, television, and other media have attempted to revisit the “urban crisis,” the long series of riots and massive white flight that transformed the U.S. city in the 1960’s. The emphasis is on how issues of historical memory become imbricated with the complex of racial, socioeconomic, gender, and spatiopolitical conflicts that define the urban crisis as a historical and theoretical problem. Email abstracts to Patrick W. Gallagher at the NYU Dept. of Comparative Literature, pwg211@nyu.edu.
Gender, Sexuality and New Perspectives in Asian American Literature and Cinema: This panel explores all aspects of gender and sexuality in Asian American literature and film. Topics can include but are not limited to: women, femininity and family; racialization and minority experience; intimacy and heteronormativity; disability and belonging; diasporas and global migrations of ideas, people, objects; representations of cities, the land and environment; queer Asian America; inter-Asian relations in a globalized world; masculinity and citizenship. Please email 300 word abstract and bio to kdaiya@gwu.edu
Geocritical New England: This panel will explore fictional landscapes of New England, particularly in their vexed relationships to the actual geographies negotiated by inhabitants of New England. Possible topics include but are not limited to: colonial accounts of the ‘new’ land; the relationship between transcendental nature studies and growing industrialization; the role of local color and regionalist writing in shaping national perceptions of New England. Papers from all historical periods welcome. Submit 300 word abstracts to Rachel Collins at racollin@syr.edu.
House and Home in 20th Century American Film and Literature: In light of America’s recent housing crisis, it seems a timely occasion to reconsider national ideas about houses, homes and home ownership as reflected in film and literature. Please submit 250-500 word abstracts on the representation of houses and the ideology of home to Megan Hamilton at mhamilto@brandeis.edu
In Memory of Radio: Modernity, (Post) Metropolis, and American Writing (Seminar): Session seeks papers on exchanges between American writers & the metropolis during the late 20th century. Asking where and how American writers locate representations of urban space, we pose new questions at the intersection of American urban geography & literature: Is Detroit an exurb of Alabama? When will the Camden renaissance begin? Where do we catch the last train for Newark? Seminar looks to reframe conversations concerned with 21st-century American cityscape. Send queries and abstracts to Michael Antonucci <mantonucci@keene.edu>.
In the Wake of 9/11: American Texts in the Twenty-First Century: The ten-year anniversary of 9/11 raises new questions about the possibilities and limitations of memorialization, bringing new complexity to acts of re-evaluation and re-assessment. What emerges in American literature, drama, television, and film in the wake of 9/11? What are the ghosts of 9/11? As we move further into the twenty-first century, how does 9/11 figure in the landscape of American texts and in critical discourse? Please send 500 word abstracts to Lisa Perdigao at lperdiga@fit.edu.
J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur: American Paradox: Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur’s Letters from an American Farmer and Sketches of 18th-Century America remain relevant because of their exploration of American contradictions, and the manner in which they negotiate the paradoxes of American identity. This panel will examine the tensions at the heart of Crèvecoeur’s writings, and explore whether some sort of balance (or “equipoise,” to use farmer James’s term) is possible in our contradictory America. Please send 300-500 word abstracts to tanya.radford@dc.edu.
Label Me Latina or Latino: Papers that address the languages and identities of Latinas/os in literature, theatre, or film are welcome for this panel. Suggestions include: Topics that address the diverse histories, cultures, identity politics, migration patterns, or other aspects of Latina/o populations in the United States. Please send abstracts to: Kathryn Quinn-Sanchez at ksanchez@georgian.edu
Levinas in Antebellum America: This panel welcomes abstracts exploring connections between the post-deconstruction ethical thought of Emmanuel Levinas and antebellum American literature. Please send abstracts with name, affiliation, and email to timstrodemeister@gmail.com
‘Luminously indiscreet’: The Visibility and Vision of Gwendolyn Brooks: In her mid-fifties, Gwendolyn Brooks began a statement about her plans for her poetry with the playful and memorable phrase, “in my next future.” Ten years after her death, we are rounding into another of her next futures–as an icon of American poetry. This panel undertakes to outline what that future is beginning to look like, by reflecting on the range of achievement that forms its foundation. Papers are welcome focusing on any phase or element of her career. 300-400 word abstracts to Bill Waddell, St. John Fisher College, bwaddell@sjfc.edu
Mapping Success and Failure in American Literature: This panel will examine the definitions, representations and critiques of “success” and “failure” as central themes in 19th and 20th American literature. How has literature mapped tensions between the idea of the self-made man and marketplace vicissitudes, or reconciled the drive of ambition and the call to moral and civic virtue? How has the identity of “the loser” been the rallying point around which notions and discourses of success have been challenged or reinforced? Please send 300-500 word abstracts to Lisette Schillig, lschilli@lhup.edu.
Naming and Framing: Identity Construction in Children’s Literature and Culture: This panel will use naming as a framework or entry point for discussing representations of identity construction in children’s literature. Papers may consider questions like: What happens when children reclaim the naming process for themselves? Or: How does naming signify broader issues of power and control of space and identity, especially as they pertain to gender or race/ethnicity? Submit abstracts of 250-500 words to Julie Cassidy at jcassidy@bmcc.cuny.edu
New Jersey: This panel will explore the literary--all genres--and film renderings of NeMLA’s 2011 host state, New Jersey. Those passing through often think of the state as nothing more than the industrial wasteland viewed from the windows as one counts the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike. But those ‘gone to look for America’ would do well to pause in this state, in many ways a microcosm of the nation as a whole. This panel will tap into that rich representational diversity. Send abstracts to Marlene Clark, westgate63@yahoo.com
No Longer Silent: Trauma in Contemporary Asian American (Korean) Literature: This panel seeks to theorize trauma and American identity specifically in the works of Keller, Rae-Lee, and Choi, Korean American authors of the post-1965 Immigration Act generation. Topics or critical paradigms can include, but are not limited to: the abject, silence, subjectivity, transnationalism, femininity, masculinity, memory, politics, rape, torture, trauma theory, psychoanalytic theory, and reader-response. Send 1-page abstract and brief bio as Word attachment to Jina Lee at jlbmetro@aol.com, with “NEMLA” in subject line.
Pan-American Immigration Narratives: Board Sponsored. This session welcomes papers examining the work by Caribbean-American and Latino/a-American authors tracing immigration experiences, including work by Pulitzer-prize winning author Junot Diaz. Please submit a 250-500 word abstract in body of email to Beth Smith <Beth.smith@ncc.edu> with ‘Immigration’ in the Subject line.
Physician/Pastor, Doctor/Divine: Intersections of American Religion and Medicine: This panel explores the interwoven roles of the pastor and the physician in American culture from Cotton Mather to House, M.D. How are the roles of physician and pastor imagined as convergent or in competition? How do fictional physician and pastor characters figure in debates about bodies, souls, and individual will? How is the sociopolitical authority of ministers and physicians negotiated, and how do the roles of doctor and divine change as women enter these professions? Send 250- to 500-word abstracts to Ashley Reed (reeda@email.unc.edu).
A (Post)Secular Age: Protestant Epistemologies and the American Novel: This panel invites papers that challenge a single, secular epistemology for the realist novel. We are particularly interested in papers dealing with the wide array of popular Protestant novels in nineteenth- and twentieth-century America: What do these novels tell about the relationship between historical empiricism, secularism, and religious belief? Could these works complicate dominate narratives of secularism in ways we have yet to account for? Please send 250 word abstracts to Kathleen Howard at khoward@rci.rutgers.edu.Extended to 10/10
Redeeming Modernity: Economy, Religion, and Literature in Modern America: According to received wisdom, modernity is most notably distinguished from previous eras by the secularization of society. However, in the work of modernist writers, fine artists, and activists, we find an abiding & sophisticated treatment of religion in America. This panel examines modernists’ engagement with American religion and the ways in which this alters our prevailing conceptions of modernity. We will examine the role of religion in the conflict between labor & capital & in the work of the American cultural front. ajball@purdue.edu
Restaging Their/Our Lives: Performing Biography on the Contemporary Stage: How do contemporary American playwrights and performers stage life and death stories, both individual and communal? How do the genres of biography and drama expand and interrogate one another on the contemporary American stage? Presentations on playwrights and performance artists (such as Anna Deavere Smith), staging writers’ lives, theater and testimony, and theatrical responses to 9-11 all welcome. Please send abstracts and inquiries to Susan Gilmore at gilmores@ccsu.edu.
‘Savages we call them’: Imagining the Native in Early American Literature: This panel will consider the transformations in attitudes and representations of Native Americans in early American literature to consider how the figure of the Native—through various forms of exclusion, allegorization, and appropriation—functions in the forming of the Anglo-American identity. All critical and theoretical approaches are welcome. Please send 250-word abstracts to Dr. Sean Kelly at sean.kelly@wilkes.edu.
The Single Woman (Roundtable): This roundtable seeks papers on the single woman in American literature from the 19th century to the present. What are the affects and attachments that define the single woman? What is the significance of loneliness and community, of childlessness and motherhood, of queerness, race, or social class in representations of single women? Please send 300-500 word abstracts to Kamila Janiszewska <kaj66@cornell.edu> or to Sarah Ensor <see23@cornell.edu>.
Social Issues in American Drama: This panel will examine social issues in American drama. The topics of the panel include, but are not limited to: the Great Depression, capitalism, civil rights movement, war, consumerism, issues of race and gender. Please submit 250-word abstracts to Cigdem Usekes at usekesc@wcsu.edu.
Suddenly Everyone Has a Cherokee Great-Grandmother: Teaching Native Literatures (Roundtable): This roundtable session focuses on classroom teaching strategies in Native American literature courses and aims to address such questions as: How do we challenge stereotypical representations in courses that take a “survey” approach? How does one teach Native literary texts to a population of students who do not necessarily reflect those experiences? How does the instructor’s own subject position impact pedagogical strategies and the classroom experience for students and teacher? E-mail 500-word proposals to jdymond@spfldcol.edu.
The Text of the Body: Art, Technology, Slavery. and Empire in the 19th century (Seminar): This seminar session seeks papers on the intersections between transatlantic representations and discourses of slavery and empire in the 19th century. How did aesthetics/new print and photographic developments affect the ways in which enslaved persons/colonial subjects were portrayed? What sorts of national investments do such images and their publishing contexts imply? How do these representations elide/align with constructions of self by enslaved or subjugated persons? 300-500 word abstracts and brief bios to Joy Bracewell, joyjohn@uga.edu
The Acknowledged Legislator: A Critical (Re)Assessment of Martín Espada: Spanning a career of nearly thirty years, Martín Espada has published seventeen books as poet, editor, essayist, and translator. But despite such a large and diverse corpus, Espada criticism on the whole tends to adhere to a decidedly limited interpretive spectrum. “A Critical (Re)Assessment of Martín Espada” seeks proposals that advocate new ways of reading and discussing Espada’s canon. Please send panel discussion abstracts of 300 words accompanied by a brief biographical statement to Edward J. Carvalho at e.j.carvalho@iup.edu.
Thinking Comparatively in Contemporary Literature: How might interpretive juxtapositions between such divergent modes as fiction and nonfiction, literary and nonliterary, and verbal and visual articulate some of the current ambivalence about method in the discipline of literary studies? Papers welcome on all aspects of comparative thinking by period, genre, or media in relation to 20th/21st century literature. Abstracts and short vitae to Cornelius Collins, Rutgers University (corneliuscollins@rocketmail.com).
Toni Morrison and Marilynne Robinson: Revisioning the American West: CFP: This panel investigates Toni Morrison’s and Marilynne Robinson’s revisioning of the American West and subsequently the tradition of American literary criticism, and, specifically, the longstanding tradition of the hero of the American West. Panelists might want to consider revisions of race and gender within the authors’ respective fiction and nonfiction, confrontations with American literary criticism, and the role of the new American hero. Inquiries or 250-500 word abstracts (and brief C.V.) to Jane Wood at jane.wood@park.edu.
Transnational ‘Environmentalities’ in Nineteenth-Century Anglophone Literature: Nineteenth-Century American, British, and other Anglophone literatures comprise subject texts of this Panel that considers literary ‘environmentality.’ Of special interest are works recovered for ecocriticism in which authors, however briefly, consider environmental phenomena, issues, and ideas that transcend the boundaries of the nation state. Above all, the Panel will examine the coalescence of various Anglophone literatures across national boundaries, revelatory of emerging global environmentalist sensibilities. (pfinn@temple.edu)
Trends in 21st Century American Drama: This panel seeks papers on changing trends in 21st century American drama. How are plays written post 2000 different what what came before? What new voices are appearing on American stages? What plays are being revived, and what does this say about our current century? Please send 300-500 word abstracts and brief biographical statements to Pamela Monaco at pmonaco@brandman.edu.
Utopian Impulses: Hope, Futurity, and Change in American Literature: This panel invites papers that consider utopian impulses in any genre or time period of American literature. What elements of utopian thought, such as hope, desire, futurity, and change, are central to texts that are have not otherwise been considered ‘utopian’? Expanding the genre of utopian literature, how can we contend with the utopian call for a better society prevalent in American literature, national identity, and individual subjectivities? Please submit 200-300 word abstracts to Katherine Broad at katherine.broad@gmail.com
The Vicious Circle: The Days, Dames, and (K)nights of the Algonquin Round Table: In 1919, several New York wits ‘roasted’ drama critic Alexander Woollcott at the Algonquin hotel. They enjoyed the afternoon so much that they met again as the Algonquin Round Table for the next ten years. This panel will consider the wit and artistry of the Algonquin Round Table. Panelists are invited to submit papers addressing the group or any members: Adams, Benchley, Broun, Connelly, Kaufman, Parker, Ross, Sherwood, Toohey, Woollcott. Our goal: remove some dust from this exciting 20th-century group. (cathy.fagan@ncc.edu)
Willa Cather: Themes and Narrative Techniques: Submissions are invited on any aspect of Cather’s fiction. All perspectives are welcome. Suggested topics include the importance of place, race and ethnicity, family relations, friendship, the arts and artists, religion, love and marriage. Papers may focus on one novel or on a short story or on Cather and another writer. Please send 300-500 words abstracts to Elsa Nettels, College of William and Mary, exnett@email.wm.edu or to 211 Indian Springs Road, Willilamsburg, VA 23185.
William Carlos Williams and the Meaning of the Local: In a short prose piece on Kenneth Burke published in Imaginations, William Carlos Williams writes that “[o]ne has to learn what the meaning of the local is, for universal purposes. The local is the only thing that is universal” (358). Paper proposals are invited that examine the personal, artistic, and /or philosophical meaning of the local for Williams, as well as proposals that consider Williams’s influence upon others representing the local. Please direct 300 word abstracts to Paul Cappucci, Georgian Court University, cappuccip@georgian.edu.
Women and Wilderness: Ecofemism in Early American Literature: This panel invites papers which take an ecofeminist approach to American literature by women in the 17th to mid-19th centuries, fiction and non-fiction, which explore ways in which women interact with the natural world, and the consequences of such relationships. How do women in the texts portray relationships with the land? Are they aware of, complicit in or attempting to resist strategies of patriarchal domination which are also being applied to the environment? Please send 300-500 word abstracts to Ashley Bourne at abourne@reynolds.edu.

The Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA) is a scholarly organization for professionals in English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, and other modern languages. Use the site to learn more about us. For more information about NeMLA and its activities, contact nemlasupport@gmail.com; to report problems or ask questions about the web site, contact websupport@nemla.org.