Join Us (any presentation genre) Health & Wellness Session at 120th PAMLA Annual Conference in Portland Oregon Oct 26-29 2023

deadline for submissions: 
May 31, 2023
full name / name of organization: 
Marja Mogk/PAMLA Pacific Ancient & Modern Language Association
contact email: 

Join us for the Pacific Modern Language's (PAMLA) 120th Annual Convention in Portland, Oregon at the Hilton Portland Hotel, October 26-29, 2023. Seeking presentations/papers in any genre for a session on the theme of health and wellness! 

Submit your proposal using PAMLA's online submission form. Go to https://pamla.ballastacademic.com to login or create an account first. Decisions on proposals will be made directly after the May 31st deadline so that all proposals are considered at the same time.

Session Title: Perspectives on Health & Wellness 

Abstract:

Health and wellness profoundly shape our teaching, learning, writing, relationships, cultures and communities, as well as our histories, literatures and media. What are our perspectives on health and wellness? Are they shifting? Should they? How has health and wellness been perceived in other eras? Papers of all kinds are invited.

Description:

Health and wellness profoundly shape our teaching, learning, writing, relationships, cultures and communities. In higher education we are continuing to see record rises in anxiety, depression, insomnia, exhaustion, difficulty focusing, absenteeism, and distracted thinking among students. Health and wellness is now more widely regarded as a component of the larger educational mission of Universities than it was in previous generations. New pedagogies, such as trauma informed teaching, have emerged along with sociological, medical, cultural and literary studies related to health and wellness. All of these developments raise many questions: what are our perspectives on health and wellness? Are they shifting? How do we live and think in relation to health and wellness in educational contexts, like our classrooms or our own writing practices? How do we see health and wellness as teachers, mentors, colleagues or community members? Is it shifting the profession or our professional lives? Should it? In what ways? In the larger American landscape, the literature of health and wellness is robust in publishing and in social media, including personal reflections, memoirs, testimonies, self-help books, podcasts, and influencer tweets and posts, alongside histories, essays, novels, poems and film. How are the shifting perspectives and conditions through which we live, including historical, educational, economic, online, and in-person cultural realities and pressures, constructing and deconstructing health and wellness? This panel invites papers on health and wellness from any perspective, pective, including the profession and pedagogy, nonprofit and educational initiatives, literary and film studies, historical and cultural studies, personal reflections and creative work.