I am seeking papers for a special sesssion (to be submitted and approved) at the MLA 2025, January 9-12 in New Orleans. Since the conference is located in New Orleans, I though I would take advantage of the setting and explore the presence of  Gullah and other regional folkores in  American literary works Toni Morrison has said that some of the songs in Song of Solomon are rooted in Gullah folklore. The theme of the MLA convention is "Invisibility." Certainly  these folkloric roots and threads in American literary works have remained invisible.

‘Wherefore to Dover?’ (King Lear)

Following the editors’ previous collaborations, Reading the Road from Shakespeare's Crossways to Bunyan’s Highways (EUP, 2020) and Reading the River in Shakespeare’s Britain (EUP, 2024), this edited collection aims to pull together new research on perceptions and representations of ports and harbours in early modern English drama.

This special session seeks a mix of six panelists who are current or recent English Master’s and Doctoral graduate program directors who can speak from first-hand experience to the market forces and realities students and alums are facing today. These roundtable speaking slots are limited to five minutes in order to make room for discussion.

It’s been 14 years since the ADE’s Ad Hoc Committee on the Master’s Degree released their report: “Rethinking the Master’s Degree in English for a New Century.” Based on their research, they found “a gap between students’ aspirations and employment outcomes on the one hand and MA programs’ stated goals and curricular requirements on the other” (1).

Patrick Leary Field Development GrantDeadline: 15 March 2024 The Patrick Leary Field Development Grant is named for long-time RSVP supporter, Board member and former President, and created with funds from a generous bequest to RSVP by the late Eileen Curran, pioneering researcher and Emerita Professor of English at Colby College.

Sally Mitchell Dissertation Prize Deadline: 1 March 2024  The Sally Mitchell Dissertation Prize is awarded annually to the best Ph.D. dissertation, defended in the previous calendar year, that explores the 19th-century British periodical press (including magazines, newspapers, and serial publications of all kinds) as an object of study in its own right, not as a source of material for other historical topics. Winners of the prize receive a monetary award of $1,000.

21st-Century Eliot. Panel for MLA 2025 (New Orleans). Recent developments in Eliot studies, including the release of the Eliot/Hale letters and the publication of Eliot’s complete prose in digital format, as well as the new editions of his poetry and new scholarly biographies and collections, promise to transform Eliot studies for the foreseeable future. 21-st Century Eliot brings together Eliot scholars with a focus on digital methodologies and/ or approaches drawing on the new materials available for research.

Send abstracts of 200 words and a brief CV to Dr. John McIntyre at jmcintyre@upei.ca by 10 March.

Call for Book Chapters

Historical Fictions as Reparative Histories

For a planned edited volume in the Global Historical Fictions Series (Brill, https://brill.com/page/419602), the editors invite proposals for book chapters.