We are particularly interested in examining the ways in which literary events, publishing formats, and networks formulate possibilities for mutual support, joint action, discursive spaces, opposition, resistance, and anti-racist intervention. We would also like to explore how current practices build on, respond to, or expand earlier conversations and interventions.
Possible topics include, but are not limited to the following:
- edited volumes and anthologies built on a central question and conceived as a possibility for empowerment and/or self-representation and/or self-identification and/or self-determined positioning and/or future-making
- multimedial, multilingual, multigenre formats “commemorating” historic key dates by “disrupting” dominant memory narratives
- solidarity events in the face of racist violence and right-wing terror
- print and online journals and magazines, conferences, festivals, and events with the aim to provide discursive spaces, “Diskursräume” and/or to subvert literary gatekeeping and/or to facilitate transcultural encounters and/or to formulate intersectional approaches
- multilingual platforms that broaden readerships
- spaces (discursive, medial, institutional, cultural, private, public, archival, literary market and publishing industries, funding structures etc.) within which literary alliance building has occurred and/or has been instrumentalized and/or has been obstructed
Please submit 300-word abstracts and a short bio to Ela Gezen (egezen[at]umass.edu) by February 29, 2024. If your proposal is accepted, you must be an MLA member by April 7, 2024. You may only have two roles at the convention.