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Proposals for special sessions at the 2013 PAMLA conference, which will be held November 1-3, 2013 at the Bahia Resort Hotel in San Diego, California, are due Saturday, December 15, 2012. To propose a special session, please send a 40 to 50 word abstract (describing the scope and significance of your proposed session), session title, your name, affiliation, and email of choice to Cheryl Edelson (specialsessions@pamla.org) by 11:59 pm Hawaii Time on December 15, 2012.

Special sessions may be on a range of topics related to the humanities, including literature, linguistics, film, media, culture, or an interdisciplinary topic. Special sessions should be on a topic sufficiently different from PAMLA’s standing session topics, specific enough to create an exciting discussion, but general enough to be of wide interest. If your proposal is approved, potential panelists will have until March 31, 2013 to propose a paper to your special session via PAMLA’s online submission system. Then, you would work with Craig Svonkin, PAMLA Executive Director, on forming your session. PAMLA does not usually approve special session proposals for pre-formed sessions.

The special theme for the 2013 PAMLA conference is “Stages of Life: Age, Identity, and Culture.” The theme is intended to allow special sessions dealing with all aspects of the intersection of Age, Identity, and Culture, from Childhood Studies to Aging Studies. Sessions might explore such issues as the analysis of “age” as depicted in literary and cultural products; children’s literature, film, and culture; childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and old age as constructed or performed identities; the ways that literature and media depict and construct concepts of age, in much the same way that ethnic, Marxist, and gender studies explore ethnicity, class, sexuality, and gender formation. We'd love to receive special session proposals on this theme, but sessions may cover various fields of interest. If your special session proposal is accepted, it will be included on PAMLA’s call for papers, and you will receive submissions, decide which proposers get invited, and then preside over the formed session at the conference.

Should your proposed session be approved, we can only guarantee you one session at the conference (should you receive a sufficient number of strong proposals to justify a session). PAMLA’s ninety minute sessions tend to have either three or four panelists. Splitting your session into two might be possible, depending upon space issues. Should you receive so many fine submissions as to justify the split, you must ask PAMLA Executive Director, Craig Svonkin (svonkin@netzero.net ), to approve your request to split your session into two sessions. In other words, you must request a split before inviting more than four panelists to join your session. Normally, presiding officers cannot present a paper in their own session, but they may propose a paper to other sessions.

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact Cheryl Edelson, First Vice President of PAMLA and Professor of English at Chaminade University: specialsessions@pamla.org. For technical questions about PAMLA’s conference, please contact PAMLA Executive Director, Craig Svonkin (svonkin@netzero.net ).