SAMLA 2016 CFPs

Below are CFPs for two panels at this year's South Atlantic Modern Language Association's conference in Jacksonville, Florida. Please circulate widely, and send me a proposal!

CFP Reminder—Abortion: The Stories We Tell
SAMLA 2016-Women’s Studies A

In the introduction to Katha Pollitt’s 2014 monograph Pro, the author expresses her regret that her own mother never told her about having had an abortion: “Knowing about her abortion might have helped me. It might have given me a truer sense of life as a young, very romantic woman who had no idea what was what.” (1-2). What are the stories we tell about abortion? For this panel, we are seeking proposals that consider the role of narrative in contemporary portrayals of abortion. Analyses of a variety of media are welcome, from literature to film to web sources. 

Please submit a 300-400 word abstract and one-page CV to Monica Miller (monica.miller@lmc.gatech.edu) by Friday, June 3, 2016.

CFP--Utopia/Dystopia: Wharton’s Land of Letters
Edith Wharton Society
SAMLA 2016—Jacksonville, Florida

Thomas More’s 1516 Utopia has stimulated a range of genre-crossing, scholarly conversations. In this panel, we wish to consider Wharton’s work within the context of these continuing conversations. Is Wharton’s Land of Letters a type of utopia? How does her work speak to the thread of feminist thinking exemplified by later works such as Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, in which dystopia dramatizes societal limits on women? How does Wharton’s work speak to late nineteenth-century utopian theorists such as Charlotte Perkins Gilman?

We welcome historical, political, ecological, feminist, and other readings of Wharton’s voice in the centuries-long conversation around utopian and dystopian perspectives. Please submit a 300-400 word abstract and one page CV to Monica Miller at monica.miller@lmc.gatech.edu by June 3.