The Eco-esotericism panel invites submissions that examine the intersection of esoteric thought and ecological consciousness as expressed in literature, cultural texts, and critical theory. Eco-esotericism encompasses approaches that unite spiritual or mystical understandings of nature with ecological critique and environmental activism. Engaging with PAMLA’s 2026 theme, “Our Ruling Classes: Culture, Power, Conflict,” this panel asks: How do esoteric ecological imaginaries reinforce, negotiate, or resist ruling ideologies? How have spiritualized visions of nature shaped elite cultural production, countercultural movements, or alternative political communities?

Special Session Proposal for the 2027 MLA Convention (Los Angeles, 7–10 January 2027).

This MLA 2027 special session, “Unfinished Histories: Literary and Cultural Acts of Hope,” explores radical hope as an emancipatory and dynamic framework for examining how literature, film, and art cultivate creative and relational modes of remembrance. Rather than approaching the past solely through paradigms of loss, grievance, or melancholia, the panel asks how cultural narratives open generative spaces for imagining unfinished futures.

For the 2027 Modern Langauge Association Convention, the MLA Committee on Disability Issues in the Profession welcomes papers about:

• disability restricting ascent within social or academic hierarchies
• anti-hierarchical thinking in literature portraying disabled people
• representations of disabilities according to an imagined hierarchy

Please submit a 300-word abstract and CV to: Cassandra.falke@uit.no

CALL FOR ABSTRACTS

A Cultural History of the Avant-garde in East Asia

Part of: Cultural Histories of the Avant-Garde: A Companion Series (www.brill.com/CHAG)

The companion series is part of an ongoing, large-scale project launched by De Gruyter Brill (a merger of two international publishing houses) that uncovers the cultural history of the avant-garde in major regions of the world. The series on East Asia consists of four volumes, each dealing with specific decades and topics as follows: 

In her introduction to Science in the Archives (2017), Lorraine Daston explores the way that scientific archives function as “repository” of scientific empiricism (10), a process through which scientists preserve scientific findings. What is occluded in this understanding, Daston explains, is that, when scientists ‘convert’ the natural world into its ‘second nature’—i.e. data—the conditions for that translation are controlled, selective, entangled, slowed, sped up, and digitized (10). Daston’s research helps us to consider how science arbitrarily constructs archivable data at an increasing rate: “more people are manipulating more information in more ways, and all at a tempo that baffles ‘what next?’ predictions” (10).