We invite abstracts for a Special Session (non-guaranteed) at the MLA Convention to be held in Toronto, Canada, from January 8-11, 2026.

The bourgeois liberal understanding of character as a unified self has long been a celebrated figure in Western literary realism. Bildungsroman with its well-rounded, psychologically fraught protagonists and their progressive self-formation offer the quintessential manifestation of this tendency. However, this unified self has variously been challenged by literatures emerging from the peripheries of existing caste/class/race as well as aesthetic hierarchies. The rise of the flat character in contemporary fiction (Nancy Armstrong) and the dismissal of the modernist emphasis on individual, subjective consciousness in favor of a collective caste consciousness (Toral Jatin Gajarawala) represent two of its many manifestations. This panel is interested in exploring such metamorphoses by asking, what remains of “character”?

Please email your 300-word abstracts to Leenu Sugathan, The George Washington University (leenusugathan@email.gwu.edu) and Moumita Chowdhury, University of Hyderabad (moumita3017@gmail.com) by or before March 16, 2025.