MMLA 2025 Call for Papers for their Permanent Section: "English III: Literature after 1900" under the theme Optimism Against All Odds in American/English Modernism

Deadline: April 24th, 2025

For consideration: please send a brief abstract (250 words), tentative title, and bio to Sophie Nunberg at snunberg@uwm.edu by April 24th, 2025.

DETAILS: 

Modernists in the 20th century certainly faced their fair share of unprecedented times: an influenza pandemic, economic collapse, two global wars—the latter punctuated by cataclysmic events that shaped our very understanding of humanity. And yet, beyond all odds, there is undeniably the presence of “optimism” in their work.

This in-person MMLA panel will investigate how (and why) did modernist writers maintain this “optimism.”

We demarcate “optimism” with quotation marks to encourage panelists to consider what this word meant for writers, and the subjective nature of the term.

This panel seeks to consider their “optimism” in a variety of contexts. These may include, but are not limited to:

• Under what conditions, forms or styles is “optimism” presented?
• The impact of identity on the conceptualization or execution of “optimism,”
• And/or impact of past, present and future “selves” on this notion
• The role of memory, story-telling (or reinvention)
• The desire to order, organize or make sense of the world
• Exilic identities/expatriatism.

The 2025 MMLA will be held 14-16 November 2025 at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.  The MMLA 2025 Theme is "The Humanities is Where Hope Lives" 

For more information: https://www.midwest-mla.org/call-for-papers