PAMLA 2025 session: Seriality, Repetition, and Adaptation in 21st-Century Storytelling
CFP: PAMLA 2025
Seriality, Repetition, and Adaptation in 21st-Century Storytelling
Special Session for Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association
Location: San Francisco, California at the InterContinental San Francisco Hotel
Conference: Thursday, November 20 through Sunday, November 23, 2025.
Abstract Submission Deadline: May 15, 2025
Presiding officer:
Mavis Tseng,
Associate Professor, Director of the Language Center
Taipei Medical University
Abstract
This special session explores seriality and repetition in 21st-century storytelling, focusing on prequels, sequels, spin-offs, remakes, and adaptations. We aim to investigate how stories are retold, reimagined and transformed across various media. We invite papers that examine the impact of seriality on genres, binge-watching culture, adaptations, and the cultural anxieties or desires reflected in repeated narratives. Submissions from a range of disciplines, including literature, film studies, media studies, cultural studies, and psychoanalysis, are welcome.
Description
This interdisciplinary session explores the role of seriality and repetition in 21st-century storytelling, seen in the growing cultural forms of prequels, sequels, spin-offs, remakes, and adaptations. Examples include Game of Thrones, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Mandalorians, Hunger Games, The Lord of the Rings, Gone Girl, Where the Crawdads Sing and more. We aim to examine how stories are retold, serialized, and transformed across texts and media. Jason Mittell suggests that seriality is present even in texts not typically considered serials, such as adaptations, while Sabine Sielke sees seriality as a key force in modernity, central to both literary works and contemporary media.
This session invites papers that explore the following questions (though not limited to these): How does seriality influence genres such as TV shows and novels? In what ways does it connect to binge-watching and the suspension of expectation? What insights can seriality offer about repetition in storytelling and adaptations? What motivates the repetition, expansion, and reimagining of stories across various media? What cultural anxieties or desires are reflected in these recurring narratives?
We welcome interdisciplinary approaches from fields such as literature, film studies, media, gender studies, psychoanalysis, cultural studies, and more
Please submit your paper title, an approximately 50 word abstract, an approximately 250-400-word description through the PAMLA website:
https://pamla.ballastacademic.com/Home/S/19517
Conference Dates
• Paper Proposal Deadline: May 15
• Paper Acceptance / Decline Reveal: May 25
• PAMLA Conference: November 20-23
If you have any questions about this approved special session, please contact Prof. Mavis Tseng at mavistseng@tmu.edu.tw