#pamla

The CFP is up for this year's Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association (PAMLA) conference! As your Fantasy & the Fantastic Area Chair, I encourage you to send proposals my way, if you've got something dealing with any aspect of, well, fantasy and the fantastic! Happy to consider proposals from independent scholars or creative folks, as well. Please ask me if you've got any questions!

We will be in sunny Palm Springs this year, in November, so come visit Southern California and hang out with us! (There are many other lovely sessions too - from Disney to Food Studies to Medieval Literature - though I will of course encourage you to submit to the Fantasy area! :D )

I'll copy my specific CFP below, and the link to my session - deadline for proposals is April 30!

Fantasy & the Fantastic

Fantasy and the supernatural, broadly defined, shape many popular narratives and universes—from Lord of the Rings to Game of Thrones, from World of Warcraft to The Witcher, from classical and medieval tales of monsters and dragons to the worlds of N.K. Jemisin, Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman, and Ursula K. Le Guin. As a genre, fantasy engages with questions of rhetoric, identity, and power in multiple ways, across media, subgenres, and cultural traditions; the enchantment of fantastic and supernatural narratives casts a persistent and global spell. For this standing session, all proposals that explore fantasy's evolutions and impacts, the fantastic and the supernatural, and/or intersections of fantasy and diverse genres, media, traditions, or time periods are invited.

Proposals which intersect with the PAMLA conference theme of “Translation in Action” are welcome, particularly those which consider related questions of translation, mediation, interpretation, power and subversion, challenges and impossibilities and discoveries, histories and practice and representation of translation, language-learning and world-construction, and cosmopolitanism. Direct link to Fantasy area here!

I’m your Fantasy & the Supernatural Area Chair for PAMLA (the Pacific Ancient & Modern Language Association), so, send me your ideas! And we’re in the final year of our “special session” status before we become a standing session - basically, once we prove that we can fill a session for three years running, I don’t have to propose it anew each year, it’ll be automatic! So come help me make this one a success!

Here’s our Call For Papers...(and here’s the link)

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Fantasy and the supernatural, broadly defined, shape many popular narratives and universes—from Lord of the Rings to Game of Thrones, from World of Warcraft to The Witcher, from classical and medieval tales of monsters and dragons to the worlds of N.K. Jemisin, Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman, Nnedi Okorafor, and Ursula K. Le Guin. As a genre, fantasy engages with questions of rhetoric, identity, and power in multiple ways, across media, subgenres, and cultural traditions; the enchantment of fantastic and supernatural narratives casts a persistent and global spell.

In the third year of this special session on the fantastic, proposals dealing with fantasy, the fantastic and the supernatural, and/or intersections of fantasy and other genres, media, or time periods are welcome. Special consideration will be given to proposals which intersect with the 2022 PAMLA conference theme of “Geographies of the Fantastic and Quotidian,” focusing on landscapes of both the imagination and of everyday experience, exploring the topographies and topologies of our constructed narratives. Examples might include examinations of fantasy settings, imagined cities, (re)imaginings of historical/present-day locations, maps and processes of mapping-out/map-making, journeys and travelogues, land-tending, border crossings, dispossession and diaspora, hauntings, interiority/exteriority, and more—though any general submissions dealing with fantasy or the fantastic are encouraged.

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Fantasy and the supernatural, broadly defined, shape many of the most popular contemporary narratives and universes—from Lord of the Rings to Game of Thrones, from World of Warcraft to The Witcher, from classical and medieval tales of monsters and dragons to the worlds of N.K. Jemisin, Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman, Nnedi Okorafor, and Ursula K. Le Guin. As a genre, fantasy engages with questions of rhetoric, identity, and power in multiple ways, across multiple media, subgenres, and cultural traditions; the enchantment of fantastic and supernatural narratives has cast a persistent and global spell. In the second year of this special session on the fantastic, proposals dealing with fantasy, the fantastic and the supernatural, and/or intersections of fantasy and other genres, media, or time periods will be welcome, as we explore fantasy’s breadth, depth, and ongoing impact.

Submit abstracts of proposed papers/presentations here at the PAMLA online portal (you’ll need an account, but that’s easy and free)! Deadline July 15.

Under the circumstances, we are definitely open to virtual papers and presentations, delivered via Zoom or Google Meet or Skype or some other video system - right now the conference is still scheduled to happen November 12-15 in Las Vegas, but that may change, in terms of going all-digital or being postponed.

How did it go?

MMLA (Midwest Modern Language Association)

Milwaukee, WI, November 5 – 8

“Cultures of Collectivity”

Organizer: Denise Du Vernay, Loyola University Chicago

“The Cultures and Subcultures created and inspired by Margaret Atwood” abstract due May 31 (but you won’t have to register until Sept. 1 in case it gets canceled after all)

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PAMLA (Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association)

Las Vegas, NV, November 12 – 15

“City of God, City of Destruction”

Organizer: Shelley Boyd Kwantlen, Polytechnic University