We invite you to submit an abstract and bio by June 17, 2026, to participate in a Modern Language Association (MLA) 2027 seminar, "Queer Literary Studies NOW." Seminar participants will precirculate 1500-word papers on the theme, and we will discuss the papers and the larger theme during the seminar on the first day of the MLA 2027 conference. MLA 2027 will take place in Los Angeles, California, January 7-10, 2027. Participants must be MLA members and register for the conference. Participation in a seminar counts as one conference appearance, so applicants should not already have two conference appearances (which is the maximum allowed). Queer Literary Studies NOW: MLA 2027 Seminar ProposalQueer literary studies burst onto the scene in the 1990s—since that time, the most influential queer literary critic has remained Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, one of queer theory's foundational thinkers. Sedgwick’s extensive and detailed textual readings were grounded in conventional notions of the literary. She combined a deep love for queer modernist authors like Proust with exhaustive queer readings of mainstream canonical texts. Her writing led to a broader critical reexamination of the canon and a greater openness to queer themes in literature, but it also had limitations. Her writing changed how we read, but not, by and large, what we read. Sedgwick’s method, in a sense, saved the traditional canon right at the moment that feminist critics, Black studies scholars, and LGBTQ+ thinkers were challenging the canon and the “literary” as a gate-keeping category. Sedgwick’s legacy left in place a disdain for (queer) popular forms in literary study that continues in contemporary books like Mark McGurl’s Everything and Less. Sedgwick’s queering of the canon led to a plethora of influential readings of diverse literary traditions, but it also took focus away from both more conventional forms of literary study—recuperative work, literary history, reprints, and bibliography. In recent years, the rise of queer archival recovery and queer bibliography has offered new methods to study or conceive of diverse queer literary traditions. After Sedgwick, queer studies largely turned away from literature and towards political movements and avant garde artistic communities. Recently, queer and trans studies have shown a renewed interest in the investigation of popular forms, including science fiction and fantasy, comics, and fan fiction. How might this turn to the popular offer new possibilities for queer literary criticism? Popular forms have been a site of freedom for queer writers when more conventional literary traditions would de-queer and closet queer writing. Queer and trans writers often generate their own literary ecosystems by starting their own presses, coopting popular trends, and queering distribution systems. Despite numerous barriers to writing about queer life authentically and nontragically, queer and trans writers have found readers by queering popular genres, and they continue to do so in the twenty-first century. We welcome projects that investigate queer and trans literary traditions, featuring a range of genres, forms, communities, time periods, regions, and methods to explore the diversity and joy of queer literature and possibilities for queer literary studies now and in the future. Interested seminar participants should submit a 250-word abstract and bio to Margaret Galvan (margaretgalvan@ufl.edu) and Jaime Harker (jlharker@olemiss.edu) by June 17, 2026.