Papers on Language and Literature is seeking proposals for special issues on subjects including but not limited to

Digital Humanities

Film

Literary Translation

Print Culture

PLL is a generalist publication that is committed to publishing work on a variety of literatures, languages, and chronological periods. We accept proposals year-round. We are a quarterly and expect to publish a special issue once a year, every year. The specific volume and issue will be determined later, depending on the editors’ schedule.

The environment is still being shaped by anthropocentric acts, facing continuous destruction, and reverberating catastrophic effects on numerous species, including humans both as individuals and as communities. This panel wants to contribute to the ongoing debate about the necessity to improve the human relationship with the environment, with nature, and the need for a significant, long overdue change of the current course of action. The ongoing unscrupulous devastation can lead to extreme outcomes such as extinction, announcing the termination of numerous representations of life in various forms. Yet, a strong resistance to this threat can be encountered in various contexts and is defined in disparate ways through diversified means of communication.

Papers for this 2023 NEMLA Conference roundtable need not involve actual deals with the devil, though such papers are welcome. The session will explore works in which a character or multiple characters engage in an activity or agreement that puts them at risk or compromises them without their anticipating or possibly understanding the full consequences or their lack of control over them. There might be a paper on Marlowe’s version of the Faust tale; there might also be a paper on Breaking Bad. There might be papers on film noir and/or the novels that inspired the films, or The Godfather.  What drives characters to make such choices?   Is it for wealth or power or something more noble or desperate?