Mennonite/s Writing: Words at Work and Play

deadline for submissions: 
November 1, 2024
full name / name of organization: 
Mennonite/s Writing 10: An International Conference
contact email: 

Mennonite/s Writing 10: An International Conferencehosted at Canadian Mennonite University
500 Shaftesbury Boulevard, Winnipeg, Manitoba R3P 2N2 Theme: Words at Work and Play
June 13–15, 2025
CALL FOR PAPERS AND PRESENTATIONS Organizers of the tenth Mennonite/s Writing conference invite proposals for critical and creative presentations on any aspect of Mennonite literature, including the 2024 conference theme of "Words at Work and Play." In her 2020 study, Making Believe, Magdalene Redekop attributes the surge of creative writing by North American Mennonites in the late twentieth century to the "many Mennonites [who] have been willing to play and be serious at the same time." Indeed, from the martyr ballads and trickster tales of the early Anabaptists through centuries of sermons, hymns, and diaries to the bestselling fiction and poetry of today, creative writing among Mennonites has always been a type of deeply serious play. At once a form of labour and of entertainment, Mennonite literary work continues to be a source of community and transgression; a means of memory and of revision; a practice of devotion, resistance, lament, and joy. In keeping with the field's long-standing practice of working across creative and critical boundaries, we invite proposals for scholarly presentations as well as creative and genre-bending work from across and beyond the academy, including: work in any literary genre or medium; audio and visual arts; theatre and film; historical writing; social critique; theological reflection; religious studies; anthropology; community-engaged research; race, ethnicity, and gender studies; ecocriticism; reconciliation and Indigeneity; postcolonial writing; autotheory; ethics; digital humanities; comedy; publishing, printing, & editing; podcasting; translation; and even literary criticism. We especially encourage submissions that will broaden and enrich the field's historical, geographical, methodological, and disciplinary range. The first Mennonite/s Writing conference took place at Conrad Grebel University College in 1990 and subsequently eight other conferences have been held: at Goshen College (three times), University of Winnipeg Centre for Transnational Mennonite Studies (twice), Bluffton University, Eastern Mennonite University, and Fresno Pacific University. Please send proposals as 250-word abstracts (with short contributor biographies) to mennowritingx@cmu.ca by November 1, 2024. More details will be available soon at the conference webpage: www.cmu.ca/programs/english/mennonites-writing