CALL FOR PAPERS

MLA 2026 (Guaranteed Session)

Toronto, January 8-11, 2026

Generous Modernisms

For MLA Toronto (January 8-11, 2026), we welcome contributions to a guaranteed Modernist Studies Association roundtable investigating the conditions, theory, and practicality of generosity and generous scholarship in modernism. We welcome papers of 5-7 minutes that ask if we have time for generosity in precarious work; imagine what a generous academic system looks like; critique traditional expectations of generosity as reliant on the free labor of individuals; and investigate generosity in modernist communities and scholarship.

We seek to interrogate why generosity seems lavish, inadequate, or necessary at this historical moment, and the various ways in which modernists and scholars can respond. Rebecca Colesworthy (2018) has argued that questions of ‘the gift’ are central to modernism’s aesthetic project, with the foremost relation being the gift of the text to the reader. While modernist texts frequently draw on the rhetoric of generosity to probe dimensions of social engagement and care, expectations of generous (and free) labor are also built into the modern academy. Feminist theorist Helene Cixous imagines an economy of generosity without debt, which seems to support teaching pedagogies grounded in kindness and hospitality. But in realizing this as a practice, how might we differentiate between generosity and exploitation?

Considering these issues, we ask: how could a generous system support its academics and students? What does it mean to read, write, or teach modernism with generosity? How do modernist writers engage with the social, political, and aesthetic dimensions of generosity? What kinds of benevolence or burden are expected from modernist students and scholars? Can generosity be a modernist, systemic, or community intervention, or is this too ‘generous’ an ask? Could a politics of generosity be a key element of resistance and opposition—and is this possible without individuals in precarious employment being expected to give the most?

We welcome a range of responses, including but not limited to the following topics:

• Examples of generosity in modernism
• Generosity as pedagogical practice
• Generosity as an organizing and activist practice
• Theories of generosity and their application to modernist texts
• Generosity as writing and scholarly practice (what does generous modernist scholarship look like?)
• Mentoring, advising, and teaching future modernists
• Generosity and divisions of labor in academia
• Systemic generosity and what a generous academic world looks like
• The risks of generous practice and giving too much
• The futility of generosity and/or generosity under the pressures of precarity, capitalism, and fascism
• The privilege required to practice generosity 
• Intersections between generosity, labor and/or teaching pedagogy, and boundaries against exploitation in the neoliberal workplace

We would particularly like to encourage submissions from graduate students, contingent faculty, students and scholars from marginalized backgrounds, people in teaching faculty positions, and people who don’t have the time or resources to be generous but are expected to be anyway.

To be considered for this roundtable, please send a brief bio and abstract (250-300 words) together to Jess Masters and Kate Schnur at jessica.masters@sydney.edu.au by March 15, 2025.