Hi all,

See the below CFP for a panel on Pacific early American literature for next year’s MLA. Please circulate to anyone you think might be interested!

The early United States imagined itself Pacific. From John Jacob Astor’s Pacific ventures to New England voyages to Canton and missionary presses in Hawai‘i in the 1820s, American nationals were entangled in Pacific worlds at the same time that continental expansion narratives took hold. This panel invites scholarship that situates early American literature within these Pacific formations prior to 1830. We welcome work grounded in Indigenous Hawaiian, Spanish Californio, Asian, and other Pacific archives, as well as scholarship that reads American texts—travel narratives, missionary writings, commercial records, diplomatic accounts—through Pacific geographies. We also welcome work that examines how later texts, films, or critical traditions retrospectively frame the early American period through Pacific imaginaries. This panel hopes to supplement Atlantic paradigms by reconsidering how early U.S. nationhood, sovereignty, imperial rivalry, and multilingual exchange were constituted through Pacific circulation.

Graduate students, contingent faculty, and independent scholars are welcome to apply.

Please send proposals of 150-250 words to Lloyd Sy (lloydkevin.sy@yale.edu) before March 22, 2026.