The following special session has been accepted for the 2020 Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association conference being held at the University of Nevada Las Vegas November 12th through Sunday November 15, 2020.

This panel invites papers on contemporary texts or stories from antiquity that examine the difficulties of expressing female saintliness/sexuality and the linguistic pathways formed, hurdles overcome, to do so. In early ascetic Christianity, female holiness required transcending female gender. Stories of female saints are fascinating navigations of gender and spirituality with astonishing tales of harlots becoming saints. The theme of female holiness and fallen women turning to religion persists throughout literature from George Eliot’s Adam Bede, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter and Susanna Rowson’s Charlotte Temple, to Simone Weil’s Waiting for God and Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Inverting the pattern, D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterly’s Lover and Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, present female protagonists who discover the sacred within sensuality. In these stories women characters, forced or voluntarily, step outside of society, positioning as martyred saints in a desert space, resulting in a poignant outsider status that offers compelling reflections upon the world from a distance. Discussion of ancient and contemporary works will provide opportunities to look for patterns and connections between old and new on this intriguing topic. Finally, having this panel in Las Vegas – the city of sin – is bound to impact the conversation in surprising and exciting ways.

Please submit your proposal abstract to https://pamla.ballastacademic.com/Home/S/18086

Just a quick update. Things have been running a bit behind with PAMLA due to the crisis and uncertainty brought on by COVID-19, which delayed activation of the proposal submission links. PAMLA has opted to go ahead and turn on the submission links, so, starting May 1st, you will be able to formally submit your proposal through the submission link.  Should the conference have to be cancelled they are going to postpone till next year, so it is sure to take place, if not this November, then November next.