SSML @ M/MLA & MLA
SSML sponsors sessions at the annual Midwest Modern Language Association and Modern Language Association conferences. Participation on SSML-sponsored panels is open to current SSML members with fully paid dues. To become a member, click here.
M/MLA 2025
Milwaukee, Wisconsin - November 14-16, 2025
Marquette University
Conference Theme: The Humanities Is Where Hope Lives
Session Title: Hope and Hybridity in Working-Class Midwestern Literature
Presiding: Marilyn Judith Atlas, Ohio University
Presentations
- “From ‘Hoboes’ to ‘Comrades’: Revolutionary Hope in Hobo News, a 20th-Century Migrant Newspaper,” Marc Blanc, Washington University St. Louis
- “The Matriarchal Zook Family Women in the Novel The Waters by Bonnie Jo Campbell,” Janet Ruth Heller, Independent Scholar
- “Finding ‘An Ornament of Comfort, a Grave and Tremulous Spring of Joy,’: Oklahoma Migrants and Hope in Sanora Babb’s 1939 novel Whose Names Are Unknown," Marilyn Judith Atlas, Ohio University
M/MLA 2024
Chicago - November 14-16, 2024
Session Title: The Relationship of Visibility, Silences, Power, and Sickness in Midwestern Literary Texts
Presiding: Marilyn Judith Atlas, Ohio University
Presentations
- “Is Winesburg, Ohio's George Willard an Unwitting Contributor to His Neighbors' Neuroses?” Robert Dunne, Central Connecticut State University
- “Foucauldian Medical Perception and the Modern Midwest in Sinclair Lewis's Arrowsmith,” Shaun F. Richards, Finger Lakes Community College
- “‘Weathering’ and Tillie Olsen's Tell Me a Riddle as Midwestern Cautionary Tale,” Marilyn Judith Atlas, Ohio University
- “'We can't stop living': Not Enough Heartland Love for Carmen Maria Machado's Queer Midwest Memoir, In the Dream House (2019),” Patrick S. Allen and Haley M. Bateman, Elizabethtown College
M/MLA 2023
Cincinnati, Ohio - November 3, 2023
Session Title: Going Public: How Midwestern Writers Foster Democracy
Presiding: Marilyn Judith Atlas, Ohio University
Presentations
- "Roughneck Style: Fashioning Radical, Interracial Regionalism in The Anvil," Marc Blanc, Washington University St. Louis
- "Going OUT in the Midwest: Brandon Taylor's Real Life," Heather Levy, Western Connecticut State University
- "Joy, Abridged: Ross Gay's The Book of Delights and the Paradoxical Indulgence of Flash Nonfiction," Hannah Kroonblawd, Malone University
- "What Susan Glaspell Gave Democracy in 1921: Grooming in “Love of the Hills,” “Trifles,” and The Verge," Marilyn Judith Atlas, Ohio University
M/MLA 2022
Minneapolis, Minnesota - November 17-21, 2022
Theme of Conference: Post-Now
Session Title (Virtual): "Post-Now": Locating the Humanities and/or the American Dream in Midwestern Literature
Presentations
- “Clara Ann Thompson, Priscilla Jane Thompson, and Aaron Belford Thompson: Republishing Post-Reconstruction Black Poets in the ‘Post-Now,’” Patricia Oman, Hastings College
- “Life on the Farm: Memoirs of the Family Farm and the American Dream,” Michele Willman, University of Minnesota Crookston
- “What’s the Matter with Iowa? Race and Religion in Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead Novels,” John Rohrkemper, Elizabethtown College
- “Bette Howland, Blue in Chicago, Public Spaces, and the American Dream,” Marilyn Judith Atlas, Ohio University
M/MLA 2021
Milwaukee - November 4-7, 2021
Conference Theme: Cultures of Collectivity
Session Title: Ambivalence, Persistence, and the Role of Community in Midwestern Literature
Presentations
- Rewriting the Chicago Renaissance: Collectively Creating the Midwest—from Hamlin Garland to Gwendolyn Brooks, 1900-1945, Aaron Cliff Babcock, Ohio U
- Community and the Unkillability of Eugene Henderson in Saul Bellow’s 1959 novel, Henderson the Rain King, Marilyn Judith Atlas, Ohio U
- Toni Morrison, the Haunting Legacies of the American South, and the Creation of a Midwest Community. Alejandra Marie Ortega, Purdue U
MLA 2026
Toronto, Ontario, January 8-11, 2026
Presidential Theme: Family Resemblances
Title of Session: Family Resemblances: Hybridity and Genre in Midwestern, Working-Class, Middle-Class, and/or Radical Literature
Presentations
Presiding: Marilyn Judith Atlas, Ohio University, Athens
- "The Poetics of Collective Efficacy: Gwendolyn Brooks and Eve Ewing in Chicago," Jared Hackworth, University of Illinois, Chicago
- "Reclaiming Richard Wright's Radical Racial and Proletarian Politics," Lydia Burleson, Stanford University
- "'a partitioned city': Liminality and the Working-Class in Bette Howland's 'Blue in Chicago,'" Kane Kijek, Ohio University
- "Resemblances and Feminist Agency in Sanora Babb's 1939 Dustbowl Novel Whose Names Are Unknown," Marilyn Judith Atlas, Ohio University
MLA 2025
New Orleans, January 9-12, 2025
Presidential Theme: Visibility
Title of Session: Visibility and Power in Midwestern Literature
Presiding: Marilyn Judith Atlas, Ohio U, Athens
Presentations
- “Foucauldian Analysis of Visibility, Power, and Knowledge in Sinclair Lewis’s Arrowsmith,” Shaun Richards, Finger Lakes Community College
- “Making the Invisible Visible: from Nella Larsen’s Quicksand to Gwendolyn Brooks’ Emmet Till Poems,” Marilyn Judith Atlas, Ohio University, Athens
- “The Invisible Dark Dangers of Urban Design in Adrienne Kennedy’s Ohio State Murders,” Jared Hackworth, University of Illinois at Chicago
- “Making the Unspoken Visible in Mona Susan Power’s A Council of Dolls,” Michele Willman, University of Minnesota Crookston
MLA 2024
Philadelphia, January 4-7, 2024
Presidential Theme: Joy and Sorrow
Title of Session: The Role of Joy in Midwestern Literature
Presiding: Marilyn Judith Atlas, Ohio U, Athens
Presentations
- "Small Bursts of Joy: Dawn Powell’s Imaginative Return Home in My Home Is Far Away," Jericho Williams, Spartanburg Methodist College
- "Social Change and Personal Happiness in Lorraine Hansberry’s The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window," Marilyn Judith Atlas, Ohio University
- "The Joy-Sorrow Continuum in Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five," Jayne Waterman, Ashland University
- "Majestic Canopy and Gnarled Roots: Joy and Sorrow in Richard Powers’s Overstory," John Rohrkemper, Elizabethtown College
MLA 2022
Washington, DC - January 6-9, 2022
Presidential Theme: Multilingual US
Title of Session: Writing With An Accent in Midwestern Literature
Presiding: Marilyn Judith Atlas, Ohio U, Athens
Presentations
- “The City in Which I Love You: Asian American Poets and the Urban Midwest,” Timothy Yu, University of Wisconsin
- “Crumbling Houses and Electric Dreams: Postwar Posthumanism in Raymond DeCapite's A Lost King,” Aaron Babcock,Ohio U, Athens
- “Safety Pins and Hidden Tears: Textual Healing in Louise Erdrich's Love Medicine,” Ross Tangedal, U of Wisconsin, Stevens Point
- “Writing English with an Accent: Bette Howland's Blue in Chicago and the Defamiliarized Image,” Marilyn Judith Atlas, Ohio U, Athens
