The Society for the Study of Southern Literature invites papers on the Fantastical Ecologies of the South for a panel at the South Atlantic Modern Language Association’s annual conference from November 15-17, 2024 in Jacksonville, FL. 

Alejo Carpentier spoke of literary techniques he perceived as unique to the New World, noting of its lo real maravilloso which is a kind of baroque mestizaje, referring to the mixtures of the European, Creole, African, and indigenous that engender new and marvelous ways of being and artistry. Carpentier thus invites us to consider the fantastical ecologies stretching across the Caribbean, binding its islands, Central and South America, and the US South into a network of the marvelous and fantastic, the real and material. In a dual sense, his magical realism, and its grounding in both the material realities of history, place, and the fantastical also invites a consideration of the scientific, the fictive, and speculative, or in other words, science fiction. We invite papers to discuss the trans-American fantastical ecologies of the South(s), their fantasies, and science fiction(s), as long as the writers and spaces of the South, the Caribbean, and Latin America are the focus of the work. Please, submit abstracts of 200-500 words, a short bio that includes preferred pronouns, and A/V requirements to Cameron Winter (cameron.winter@gatech.edu) and Zita Hüsing (zhuesing3@gatech.edu) through the following Google form: https://forms.gle/zyZrhXy31fPCmWXu7.