The 123rd Annual Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association (PAMLA) Conference will take place this November in Seattle, Washington, from November 12-15.

This session seeks papers that explore forms of play in American fiction from 1945 to the present. There are many conceptual genealogies of play within fields such as psychoanalytic theory, Marxist theory, structuralist and poststructuralist theory, affect theory, critical race theory, queer theory, and video game theory.

While we are open to any compelling abstracts exploring play in American fiction from 1945 to the present, papers that consider how play may connect to the conference theme, “Our Ruling Classes, Culture, Power, Conflict,” are particularly welcome. Philosophers and classical play theorists characterize play as a form of “freedom” (Schiller, Huizinga), but postcolonial and diasporic approaches to play consider the violence and objectification within play (Fickle, Patterson, Trammell). How might diasporic and postcolonial approaches to play problematize the idea of citizenship? Does play have utopic or dystopic affordances? How might contemporary ludic discourses undo and invent our idea of “freedom”?

Submit abstracts through this link: https://pamla.ballastacademic.com/Home/S/20114