Calls for Papers
SSML-sponsored panels at the Midwestern Modern Language Association annual and the Modern Language Association conferences may be found here.
CFP: Proposed Midwestern Miscellany Issue on "Reading and Writing the Midwest"
See the full CFP here.
Revised Deadline for Miscellany proposals: October 15, 2025.
Presidential Theme: Family Resemblances
Title of Panel: Family Resemblances: Hybridity and Genre in Midwestern, Working Class, and/or Radical Literature
Organizer: Marilyn J. Atlas
Description & Requirements: Requesting Abstract (no more than 200 words) and CV.
- Who are your favorite twentieth-century Midwestern worker writers?
- Are their styles radical, hybrid?
- Are they dramatists, poets, essayists, fiction writers?
- What is their part in the tradition of Midwestern literary radicalism?
Contact: Marilyn Judith Atlas (atlas@ohio.edu), Ohio U, Athens
CFP: 2026 MLA (Toronto)
January 8-11, 2026
Submission deadline: March 20, 2025
Conference Theme: “The Humanities Is Where Hope Lives”
Title of Panel: Hope and Hybridity in Working-Class Midwestern Literature
Description & Requirements: Requesting Abstract (no more than 200 words) and CV.
Douglas Wixson, in his Jack Conroy biography, Worker-Writer in America, 1994, demonstrates that there is a tradition of twentieth-century Midwestern literary radicalism. Has that tradition changed in the last several decades? How? What is the role of place in it? Is this literature hybrid or experimental? Does it (drama, poetry, fiction, or nonfiction) demonstrate hope—directly or indirectly? Working-class literature is diverse, and it needs to become more visible—perhaps one text at a time.
Contact: Marilyn Judith Atlas (atlas@ohio.edu), Ohio U, Athens
CFP: 2025 MMLA (Marquette University, Milwaukee)
November 14-16, 2025
Submission deadline: April 25, 2025
