CFP: Midwestern Conference on Literature, Language, and Media

deadline for submissions: 
January 27, 2017
full name / name of organization: 
Northern Illinois University
contact email: 

CALL FOR PAPERS: MCLLM

Conference Date: April 7-8, 2017

Deadline for Proposals: January 27, 2017

Theme: “Altered States, Times, Perspectives”

The 25th annual Midwestern Conference on Literature, Language and Media (MCLLM) at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, IL, is currently accepting proposals for 15-minute papers from individuals and panels (graduate students encouraged – see below for information on the Chuck Bowie Student Participation Awards).  We are particularly interested in papers that explore this year’s theme: Altered States, Times, Perspectives. Purposefully broad in scope, this theme offers researchers a chance to present argument-driven papers on topics such as (but not limited to):

  • Biographical Studies (see below on Emily Hipchen Bowie Autobiography Studies Award)
  • Utopia/Dystopia
  • Time Travel
  • Space Travel
  • Travel Narratives (“road” movies, novels, etc.)
  • Historical change
  • Political change
  • Changes in an author’s work (or changes in the notions of authorship)
  • Changes in critical framework
  • Minority approaches/voices
  • Changing conceptions (of gender, race, identity, class, time, etc.)
  • Loss, displacement, destruction
  • Gain, (re)placement, (re)construction

This conference encourages proposals from a wide range of research in the humanities. Possible research areas include (but again, not limited to): literature and poetry, creative writing, linguistics, written and visual rhetoric, journalism, narrative and documentary film, music, games/video games, anime, television, radio, new and social media, history, and pedagogy in these fields.

This year’s distinguished keynote speaker will be Anne Lake Prescott, emerita professor of English and Comparative Literature at Barnard College, Columbia University. Professor Prescott’s wide array of publications include: The Norton Critical Edition of Edmund Spenser’s PoetryFrench Poets and the English Renaissance: Studies in Fame and Transformation; and Imagining Rabelais in the English Renaissance. In addition, she is also the editor or co-editor of several essay collections, including: Renaissance HistoricismsFemale and Male Voices in Early Modern England; and Approaches to Teaching Shorter Elizabethan Poetry.  Professor Prescott is also a founder and co-editor of the journal Spenser Studies: A Renaissance Poetry Annual

If interested in presenting at the conference, please submit 200-500 word proposals by January 27, 2017, to mcllm@niu.edu, including name, institutional affiliation, email, and phone number of each author. Panel proposals should include a brief overview of the panel’s theme and purpose, along with a 200-500 word abstract for each paper.

*The Chuck Bowie Student Participation Awards provide a total of $1000 to support graduate student participation in MCLLM. This total helps provide a waiver of registration fees ($40 each) for 12 local graduate student presenters, and two larger prizes of $260 each to graduate student presenters from out of town. Eligibility would be based on graduate student status and strength of the proposal.

*The Emily Hipchen Bowie Autobiography Studies Award offers $500 for a graduate student presenting on something related to autobiography/life writing studies. Emily Hipchen Bowie is the editor of the prominent, internationally known scholarly journal a/b: Auto/Biography Studies, the journal of record for life writing. Many of the issues of the journal have become Routledge books. Emily is graciously offering a prize for a graduate student conference attendee working on “life writing research.” Any graduate student attending the conference and presenting on a topic in this area is eligible. Awarded based on the strength of the proposal. 

For more information, please visit: http://www.niu.edu/clasep/conferences/mcllm/index.shtml