Nancy Fraser has written that, from the perspective of critical theory, "it is by no means clear what it means today to speak of 'transnational public spheres." This special session responds to the 2016 presidential theme, and asks what "the public sphere" means for an age of globalization. How does contemporary literature contribute to public sphere theories that overspill the imagined and material borders of the nation-state? What kinds of publics do these texts address and envision? And how do these texts modify the language of deliberative democracy to incorporate multi-state political bodies?

Proposals invited for MLA roundtable session (Austin, TX; January 2016) on innovative approaches to teaching literature surveys. Papers may encompass the practical (e.g., syllabus design, teaching strategies, assignments/assessment), the institutional (i.e., ways of introducing curricular innovation), and/or the theoretical (i.e., on place of the survey course in our curricula and the discipline). 250-page abstracts and brief CV to dujardin@queensu.ca by March 15.

Please consider and feel free to disseminate the following "Call for Papers" for the upcoming PAMLA Conference (Portland, Oregon Nov. 6-8, 2015). The deadline is May 1st. Please go to http://www.pamla.org/2015/topic-areas for instructions on how to submit your proposal online. The session is open to all Modern Languages and cultures including Arabic, Chinese and ESL.

The theme "Literature and Its Publics" invites us to consider the face of all of our objects of attention—not only literature and other kinds of texts but film, digital media, and rhetoric—and to consider our indispensable role in bringing texts and their audiences together. Papers and presentations might reflect on the current public status of literature and other kinds of texts in our society; address the nature of public reception according to period, genre, author, or otherwise; or imagine different futures.

Call for papers

23rd RANACLES Conference

"Language Centers and Specialization(s)"

University of Toulouse – Jean Jaurès, France

November 26-28, 2015

Since the 1999 Bologna Process and the implementing of the LMD reform in 2002 in France, Higher Education institutions, and especially universities, have undergone major transformations. Today, almost every student has language courses in his/her curriculum, even in Humanities universities where the sector of languages for students specialized in other fields than languages (LANSAD acronym in French) was structured quite late because of the historical presence of degrees in Languages Studies and Philology (for those students specializing in languages).

"No story is the same to us after a lapse of time," George Eliot writes in Adam Bede, "or rather, we who read it are no longer the same interpreters." For a proposed MLA 2016 special session, we seek papers on reencountering texts at different moments in the life course. Given debates about the perception of "late style" in the work of artists and writers nearing the end of their lives, might there be cause to postulate a "late" (or "early") style among readers or viewers? What differences emerge with age and experience? How do political and cultural developments, shifts in aesthetic fashion, emerging critical perspectives, technological innovations, or the vicissitudes of personal history contribute to the renewal of a text over time?