Proposals for Kate Chopin panels at 2025 American Literature Association Conference

deadline for submissions: 
January 17, 2025
full name / name of organization: 
Kate Chopin International Society
contact email: 
  • The first panel, a roundtable on “Kate Chopin in the Classroom/ Teaching Through Technology,” seeks short (seven- to eight-minute) papers/remarks that address an aspect of or strategy for teaching Chopin’s life or work in the contemporary classroom. How do you teach Chopin in the post-covid classroom? What in-class activities and assignments incorporating technology, multimodality, infographics, podcasts, TikTok videos, AI, etc. are engaging your students as they study Chopin? Proposals should include a title, your name and affiliation, and a paragraph about your proposed remarks.
  • Freedom and responsibility have their source in consciousness. As a philosophy that examines the phenomenology of being in a world, Existentialism emphasizes personal responsibility in a world that is open to choices. These choices define who we are at any individual moment. As Jean-Paul Sartre explains "man is the means by which things are manifested." As a creator, one is thereby responsible for what one brings into the world. The second panel, “Existential Prisons: Freedom, Choice, and Authenticity in Kate Chopin” seeks proposals that examine freedom and responsibility, looking at any aspect of Kate Chopin’s work through a philosophical and theoretical lens, particularly emphasizing the choices that contemporary women negotiate in the modern world in consideration of their relationships, their work, their art, and the barriers that obstruct or challenge their pursuit of freedom and authenticity. Papers might make connections between Chopin’s writing and current events, other writers, politics, and controversies, or highlight how her fiction continues to offer readers valuable historical and/or aesthetic understanding. Proposals for presentations no longer than twenty minutes should include a title, your name and affiliation, and a 200- to 400-word abstract.

 Send submissions for both the roundtable and the open session by Friday, January 17, 2025, to Quinn Moyer at Duquesne University, moyerq@duq.edu AND Stacy Stingle at Louisiana State University, ssting1@lsu.edu.