For this guaranteed session of the TC Religion and Literature forum at the January 2027 MLA convention, we invite papers focusing on literatures of migration and spirituality. Given the convention’s location in Los Angeles, we especially welcome proposals that consider authors and texts with connections to LA and the city as a site of contact, dialogue, and religious syncretism.

Papers might consider, for example:

-       Memoirs of migration in place and faith

-       Religious affect in literatures of exile and precarity

-       Indigenous survival and reemergent spiritual practices in and around LA

-       Sacred spaces and urban geography

-       Syncretism in both religious practice and literary form

-       Entanglements of religion in colonial and anti-colonial histories of LA

-       LA-connected authors engaged with religious traditions (for example, Cherríe Moraga, Helena María Viramontes, Karen Tei Yamashita, Laila Lalami, Douglas Kearney)

Email 250-word abstract and CV to Bill Viestenz at wviesten@umn.edu by 16 March 2026.