twentieth century and beyond

The International Vladimir Nabokov Society seeks paper proposals for presentations on the following themes for the Modern Language Association’s Annual Convention (January 7-10, 2027, Los Angeles):  

Nabokov, Freedom, and Anti-Authoritarianism

This seminar explores stupidity as a literary and philosophical problem, alongside related concepts including ignorance, idiocy, folly, non-knowledge, and other forms of epistemic failure.

In literary fiction, the representation of consciousness has often been understood through what might be called the thought of looking: the ways narrative cognition renders a work into a perceptive, embodied, and self-reflexive experience through language. In cinema, by contrast, cognition typically becomes the look of thought: a mental interiority suggested through framing, editing, gesture, movement, and performance. Interactive stories told in videogames complicate this distinction through their intermedial nature. Games must not only represent what characters think, but also account for the player's "will to activity", translating the audience’s intentions into feedback, movement, and action.

Call For Papers

Issue VII: Reclaiming the City: Built Environment and Social Change

This MLA just-in-time panel explores the evolving status of non-binariness in trans studies and beyond. Following Marquis Bey’s Nonbinary Life, we ask: Is non-binariness an emancipatory narrative? What are its critical potentialities and limitations? Send 150-200 word abstracts + bio to m.stekl@colostate.edu by 8/21. (The MLA will take place in Los Angeles from 7 to 10 January 2027.)

CALL FOR PAPERS — NeMLA 2027 Seminar

Salve Regina University, Newport, RI | March 6–9, 2027

Untameable Texts: The Eternal Return of Indigenous Cosmogonies and Their Myths

 27th & 28th May 2027 (In-Person, Newcastle University, UK) Since their inception, video games have been defined by, and grounded in, space and place: from the maze in The Temple of Rom (1982) to the Hyrulian depths in Tears of the Kingdom (2023), from the Holy Land of the Crusades in Assassin’s Creed (2007) to the noirish city of Detroit: Become Human (2018), and from the farms of Stardew Valley (2016) to the depths of Hell in Hades (2020), video games have been concerned with the relationship between the player-character, place, mobility, and game-play mechanics.  This conference asks how place and space have been represented in and mobilised in video games: we are interested in spaces of imagina