Abstract: Feministas Unidas invites interdisciplinary contributions for its non-guaranteed session in online format for MLA 2026 (Toronto, January 8-11, 2026). Proposals can be submitted even if you are not a member of Feministas Unidas. Now, if accepted, they must register for the periods 2025 and 2026. This call for contributions seeks proposals that examine literatures written by women in the transatlantic orbit, from the Middle Ages to the present, focusing on experiences of exile, displacement, and the difficulties faced by both the women and their texts in entering archives. Archives are understood here as key instances for articulating the discourses of history and memory, as well as organizations connected to inclusion or exclusion from the literary canon. We seek proposals framed from multiple and divergent enunciative locations, such as global literatures, with the aim of destabilizing traditional geopolitical hierarchies and reflecting on how female authors use their artistic, literary, political, and cultural production to create worlds, meaningful universes in which the identities they propose or embody, and ultimately, new anchors, are situated. This needs to create worlds becomes even more relevant when considering the persistence of the experiences of exile and insilio among authors, from medieval writers, through Iberian mystics and modern Latin American figures, the Enlightened, the cosmopolitan women of the long 19th century, to contemporary writers from Africa, the Caribbean, and Latin America. Exile/insilio serve as guiding threads in women’s writings, which, while revealing the fissures of socio-national, identity, and modernization projects, also expose the fractures and overflow of archives, as well as the blind spots in writings on history and memory. Thus, the strategies deployed by authors and their works to create meaningful universes, networks, and genealogies, to participate in aesthetic-ideological debates, and, ultimately, to create worlds in which their existences and proposals can thrive, are central to this reflection and the call for contributions. In this context, reflection on archives and the issues they raise—along with their silences, omissions, and fragmentations—becomes key. This session seeks to be a space for reflection on these issues from the perspective of a complex, transhistorical archive that gathers divergent voices, which is even more significant in the times we live in, marked by new migration processes, displacements, segregations, and (de)rooting. Those interested must complete this Google form (https://forms.gle/Bab23yox4mWMdQsi6) in English or Spanish, with a title, an abstract, and a biography of 250 to 300 words each before March 20, 2025. For any questions, please contact Dr. Ana I. Simón-Alegre: president.feministasund@gmail.com

Dates to Keep in Mind:

• March 20, 2025: Submission of abstracts via Google form (https://forms.gle/Bab23yox4mWMdQsi6)
• March 21, 2025: Notification of acceptance or rejection
• March 23, 2025: Confirmation.
• March 24, 2025: Official submission of the proposal to MLA.