Briefly: A reader's sense of time in literature rests upon a fully embodied and affective reading experience. Amongst an author's mechanisms for communicating a shared sense of time with one's readers is the use of highly affective, visceral, and/or proprioceptive linguistic cues. I'm looking for work that either explains or demonstrates how the affective communication of felt time works in contemporary American literature. Interdisciplinary work especially encouraged. Panel to take place at the 2015 annual PAMLA conference in lovely Portland, OR, Nov. 6-8, under the title "Ethics and Affect III: Temporalities." Submit 300-word paper proposal to pamla.org/2015 by June 10 (this is an extended deadline).

In more detail: Every novel carries its own distinct sense of time's passing (as does any story, whatever its medium). Amongst an author's mechanisms for communicating a shared sense of time with one's readers is the use of highly affective, visceral, and proprioceptive linguistic cues. For example, an author may switch between short sentences full of chopped, 1-2 syllable words to longer, languid sentences containing more polysyllabic words, in order to communicate the different speeds or emotional valences of two different characters, or two different events. Phonetics and the mouth feel of words ("sh", "k") can also come into play in creating a sense of felt time in a novel. So too do effective descriptions of characters' bodily gestures, acting through sympathetic proprioception, quite physically put a reader into the distinctive time and space of a novel.

I'm interested in eliciting for focused discussion both of the following: 1) theoretical essays that seek to explain how the affective communication of felt time works in contemporary American literature and 2) close readings of novels that seek to demonstrate how the affective communication of felt time works in contemporary American literature.

This panel is open to papers that explore any and all genres of literature (including novels, short essays, erotica, graphic novels, etc. etc.) and that explore any and all literary topics and themes (for example, trauma and felt time, the representation of sex, pain, work, or loss in literature, communication of time in modernist novels, etc. etc.), so long as the paper centrally focuses on the phenomenon of 'felt time' in literature.

Inter- and cross-disciplinary work is especially encouraged.

The deadline for 300 word paper proposals is June 10 (extended deadline); submit your proposal to pamla.org/2015. Feel free to email me with questions but all proposals must be submitted to PAMLA's online submission system (pamla.org/2015) by midnight June 10 in order for me to consider them.

Presiding Officer: Rachel Kaufman, State University of New York (SUNY) at Binghamton