MLA 2025 (9-12 January)

New Orleans, LA, USA

Panel: Performing Multiculturalism and Multilingualism in Medieval and Renaissance Drama 

The Medieval and Renaissance Drama Society (MRDS) has a guaranteed session at the 2025 MLA Annual Convention (9-12 January). New Orleans, LA, USA–the location of the 2025 conference–boasts a rich history forged through the comingling of diverse ethnicities, races, religions, and identities. In concert with this history of New Orleans, the MRDS panel organizers seek papers that analyze cultural and linguistic mixing on Medieval and Early Modern stages. Possible topics include (and are not limited to): 

Noted Marxist scholar, Kohei Saito in his book, Karl Marx’s Ecosocialism: Capital, Nature and the Unfinished Critique of Political Economy (2018) rightly pointed out that the evolution of society is in close correlation to the trajectory of the progress of technology. Drawing upon the principle of thermodynamics, another notable Marxist scholar, Amy E. Wendling argued in Karl Marx on Technology and Alienation (2009), that purpose of labour had undergone a radical transformation following the progression of technology, allowing for a re-valuation of all material objects. Hence, the use of labour for harnessing natural resources, chiefly for the purpose of sustenance of human life, had been deeply altered by technology.

There have been several recent discussions on decolonisation, diversity, and inclusion in creative writing pedagogy and publishing, following the Black Lives Matter movement, #publishingpaidme on Twitter on racial disparities in pay, and reports such as ‘Rethinking Diversity’. But have these discussions led to meaningful changes in academia and publishing?

The ‘Rethinking Diversity’ report (2020) stated that publishers have a narrow understanding of their core reader, whom they describe as ‘a white, middle-class older woman sardonically referred to as Susan’, likely uninterested in books by writers of colour.