A quarter century has elapsed since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, both the successful ones targeting the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and the unsuccessful one targeting the Capitol. As politically charged tragedies often do, they’ve inspired a variety of moving and symbolically rich artistic representations—for example, June Jordan’s poem “Do You Do Well to Be Angry” (2001); John Bennett et al.’s light sculpture, Tribute in Light (2002ff); Art Spiegelman’s comic book, In the Shadow of No Towers (2005); Jonathan Safran Foer’s novel, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (2005); John Updike's novel, Terrorist (2006); Paul Greengrass’ film, United 93 (2006); Jack Whitten’s multi-media on canvas, 9.11.01; Don DeLillo’s novel, Falling Man (2007); Haruki Murakami's essay, "Realty A vs. Reality B" (2010), as it relates to his earlier and later novels; Will Fetters and Allen Coulter’s film, Remember Me (2010); Steve Reich’s composition for string quartet and voice recordings, WTC 9/11 (2011); Michael Arad’s architectural design for the 9.11 Memorial (2011); Patrick Carson’s play, Elevator (2011); Eric Roth and Stephen Daldry’s film adaption of Safran Foer’s novel (2011); and Martin Guigui and Steven Golebiowsk film adaptation of Carson’s play (2017). While considerable critical attention has rightly been paid over the years to the history and politics of 9.11 and its aftermath, less so its artistic representation sadly. PAMLA meeting shortly after the twenty-fifth anniversary is an occasion to help to ameliorate this.

All disciplines and approaches welcome.

Submission guidelines: Abstracts should be submitted by the extended deadline, August 5, 2026, directly to the PAMLA site, at https://pamla.ballastacademic.com/Home/S/20281 (including a version of the above edited by the conference committee). They will be accepted and reviewed until then or until the session fills. Questions, concerns, and inquiries generally may be forwarded to: trip@mccrossin.org.