CCLA – Fantastical Constellation Working Group Call for Proposals


CCLA Annual Conference / Colloque annuel de l’ACLC

The Fantastical Constellation Working Group invites proposals for a panel or round table
topic, “Entangled Futures: Interstitial Fantasies from the Periphery,” as part of the
Canadian Comparative Literature Association Annual Conference, 8-10 June 2026, hosted
by the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at McGill University in
Montréal.
The Fantastical Constellation Working Group proposes an all-encompassing engagement with
current issues in postmagical realism studies to explore the process of worlding; examine how
speculative modes blend scientific and magical elements to create new forms of expression that
move beyond traditional magical realism in our complex post-truth era of developing new
technologies and unsettlement of global orders.
“Entangled Futures: Interstitial Fantasies from the Periphery” draws on physicist and feminist
theorist Karen Barad’s concept of agential realism, rooted in quantum physics. Barad proposes
that entities do not exist as separate, independent beings that later interact, but are mutually
constituted through “intra-actions” between human and non-human forces—an approach that
reframes how scientific and political practices are intertwined. Building on this sense of dynamic
interconnectedness, the panel explores how speculative and fantastical narratives emerging from
the peripheries—whether geopolitical, cultural, or aesthetic—reconfigure relations among
science, technology, and imagination. Here, the “periphery” extends beyond geography to
include cultural and political margins, as well as hybrid artistic formats such as performance,
film, and digital art, to name a few, where experimental practices unsettle conventional
boundaries between genres and media. “Entangled futures,” then, imagines divergent pathways
shaped by dystopian, utopian, and speculative tropes, while the term “interstitial” foregrounds
the generative spaces between borders, bodies, and identities where new forms of posthuman and
postmagical expression emerge.
Such theorization might look to Mads Rosendahl Thomsen’s contention that posthumanism is an
important focus for all forms of artistic expression, going beyond non-human and machinic
representations, and Premesh Lalu’s argument for magical realism’s capacity to “eke out a more
generous form of life through an affirmation of humanity,” combining “science with the
specifically human attributes of memory, judgment, and imagination to withstand the speed of
machines.”
We propose, then, a theme with a strong theoretical anchor while remaining broad enough to
attract diverse proposals from scholars working across different disciplines and literary
traditions. We invite proposals that explore how fantastical literature from the margins—be it
geographical, cultural, or aesthetic—challenges traditional boundaries.
Proposals might engage such topics as:

Bodies, Technologies, and Posthumanism

  • Posthumanism and the body: how do texts from marginalized perspectives reimagine the
    human body and its relationship with technology, particularly as the blurring of
    boundaries between the biological and the technological raises profound ontological and
    ethical questions concerning personhood and agency.
  • Cultural and political: subcultures and political margins. (It is known that Silicon Valley
    tech-moguls read science-fiction, as well as view films like The Matrix, and use them in
    marketing their technological ideas.) Are there science fiction or broadly fantastical
    narratives, ideas, or imaginaries (dystopias, utopias, revolutionary and evolutionary
    ideas) that influence, or are used in the (political) margins?
    Translation and Cross-Linguistic Estrangement
  • Translation through the margins: How does translation, as a practice and concept, figure
    in rearticulating the fantastic? How is the estrangement function of science fiction and
    fantasy in overlooked languages kept alive or smoothed out through translation into
    English?
    Decolonial and Queer Futures
  • Postmagical realism and peripheral decolonized futures: How do contemporary works
    blend scientific and magical elements to create new forms of expression that move
    beyond traditional magical realism?
  • Queer and decolonized futures: Histories have been rewritten as herstories, decolonial
    histories, and queer histories. Can categories of identity constructed within power
    relations—like temporality and space—subvert linear projects of progress imposed on
    them by the world and higher powers and, through queer practices, become a space of
    constant negotiation of difference and resistance; become an antagonist in relation to their
    own microcosm, critical and judgemental (Mendlesohn).
  • The other: Fantasy of the other; other forms of oppression.
    Temporalities and Retrofuturism
  • Retrofuturism: In the field of international politics and strategy, ‘scenario methodology’
    has gained traction in recent years — creating hypothetical and alternative models of the
    future based on an analysis of the current geopolitical situation. Given the tendency to
    focus on the world’s most liminal geographical areas, how do post-magical realism and
    science fiction expand our horizons by giving voice to the most marginal geographical
    realities?
  • Temporality: understandings of time in speculative fiction.
    War, Ruins, and Reconstruction
  • War as subject and the future: War is a common theme or background in science fiction
    narratives. Most current digital technologies depend, or are generated in, the military
    context of WWII or Cold War. Benjamin points to Italian Futurism’s aestheticization of
    war as foundational to the fascist political aesthetic. Is war in science fiction’s visions of
    the future presented as an aesthetic—such as ruins, postapocalyptic or heroic and action-
    packed aesthetic—as a way of pushing certain ideologies/agendas, or is war an
    unavoidable part of interstitial fantasies inevitably entangled with technological/scientific
    progressive fantasies?
    Eco-critical Imaginaries
    Eco-criticism: the climate crisis in speculative fiction.
    Theatrical and Performative Fantasies
    Theatricality and performance: How do ideas of entanglement and alterity manifest in
    fantastical theatre or performance art, beyond “spectacle and the fantastic . . . to connect
    to the audience’s imagination, their beliefs, and their hopes in the fantastic for a better
    world or at least a way to make it better” (Magoffin).
    Instructions for proposals:
    All sessions will be in hybrid format. For participation in (a) Paper Panel (papers of 20 minutes);
    or (b) Roundtable (5-minute introductions to be followed by discussion).
    Please submit a proposal of no more than 250 words.
    Include a brief bio (max 100 words) with contact information.
    Also, please indicate:
  • whether you will present in person or online.
  • any technical requirements for your presentation.
  • the forum in which you wish to participate
    Deadline for submissions: January 31, 2026.
    Please submit your proposal to:
    Jill Planche – Email: jillplanche@gmail.com
    Agata Mergler – Email: agatamer@yorku.ca
    Elisa Leonzio – Email: elisa.leonzio@gmail.com

First Anniversary of the Research Group “Literatures and Religions: Interconnected Narratives”

This month marks one year anniversary of the CCLA research group “Literatures and Religions:
Interconnected Narratives.” The group was conceived as a continuation of the discussion on sacred
texts and their impact on literature and culture in the panel “Connecting les êtres” at the CCLA
conference at Université de Montréal in June 2024. The research group was intended to provide a
space to continue similar academic discussions and to build collaborations among scholars with
shared interests.
The launch of this initiative in November 2024 proved successful in bringing together a diverse
group of scholars from around the world. Currently, the group includes participants from North
America, South America, Europe, Middle East, Africa, and South Asia who work on the
intersections of various religious traditions, mythologies, and literatures in English, French,
Spanish, Italian, Ukrainian, Russian, Arabic, Hebrew, Yiddish, Farsi, and Hindi, among others.
Our current program includes three key projects:

  • Monthly online meetings to discuss topics related to the scope of interests of our group.
  • Conference panels within the annual CCLA meetings.
  • Collective publications to be proposed in the future.
    The group meetings occur monthly via Zoom. At each meeting, we have an informal discussion
    of a group participant’s current research, such as the presenter’s ideas for their upcoming
    conference papers or publications (or a dissertation chapter for graduate students). It’s an
    opportunity to test your ideas, get feedback, ask questions, and think together. We hosted the
    first online meeting of the group in November 2024 and continue these seminars monthly since
    then (except June for the CCLA annual meeting and a summer break in August). Please see
    below the list of our past seminars:
  • December 2024: Shlomo Gleibman (Humanities, York University), “A Queer Genealogy
    of Havruta: Study Partnership as Intimate Relationship Between Men in
    Jewish Literature.”
  • January 2025: Luigi De Angelis (Comparative Literature, Western University), “Hesed
    and Passion: Gabriela Mistral’s Poetic Retelling of the Book of Ruth.”
  • February 2025: Lisa Viviani (Comparative Literature, Western University), “Beauty and
    the Bad Boy: ‘James Dean Daydream’ Lovers in American and Italian Adolescent
    Fiction.”
  • March 2025: Maria Ruggero (Comparative Literature, University of Bari Aldo Moro,
    Italy), “Melusina: The Myth of Femininity and Religion.”
  • April 2025: Olga Stein (English, York University), “Religious Conversion and Creative
    (Self-) Reinterpretation in Lyudmila Ulitskaya’s Daniel Stein, Translator.”
  • May 2025: Khedidja Chergui (Department of English, L’Ecole Normale Supérieure de
    Bouzaréah, Algiers), “On Love Jihad in Contemporary Indian Literature.”
  • July 2025: Ivan Pavlii (Dallas International University), “Interfaith-Based Study of
    Contemporary Arab Literature.”
  • September 2025: Laurence Sylvain (President of ACLC/CCLA), “De profundis clamavi,”
    a chapter from the project on Simone Weil.
  • October 2025: Luigi De Angelis Soriano (Huron University at Western University),
    “Women’s Bonds and Chance Encounters: An Analogical Reading of the Book of Ruth
    and Joshua Marston’s Film Maria Full of Grace” (published in Journal of Religion &
    Film).
  • November 2025: Ivan Pavlii (Dallas International University), “Chicago by Alaa Al-
    Aswany,” second part of the interfaith-based study of contemporary Arabic literature.
    In December, we welcome everyone to join Shlomo Gleibman for a discussion of a short story
    “Minyan” by David Bezmozgis, a Toronto-based writer, which is part of Shlomo’s forthcoming
    article “Writing Canadian Judaism through Queer Loss and Migration” in Canadian Jewish
    Studies. This presentation will focus on the literature of Canadian Jewish immigrant writers from
    the former Soviet Union.
    We also participate in the annual CCLA meetings. In June 2025, the research group organized
    two panels at the CCLA conference at Trent University in Peterborough: “Reimagining the
    Sacred: Reception of Religious Themes in Poetry, Life Narratives, and Films” and “Crossing
    Boundaries: Intersections Between Religion, Fiction, and Literary Theory.” Currently, we are
    developing a panel proposal for the CCLA conference scheduled for June 2026 at McGill
    University in Montreal.
    The research group’s mission is critical inquiry into the intersections of diverse literatures,
    cultures, religions, and spiritualities, such as the presence of religious and spiritual themes and
    motifs in literary fiction, memoirs, film, visual arts, performance, and music. This approach is
    important because of the cultural, social, and political effects that religious traditions still have in
    contemporary world. The comparative approach that characterizes the CCLA provides us with an
    excellent platform to discuss these ideas and foster connections between scholars representing a
    rich variety of theoretical approaches and personal backgrounds. Possible topics for exploration
    and further discussion include (but not limited to):
  • intersections of religions and texts (broadly defined)
  • interfaith perspectives of religion and culture
  • religions and literatures in the 21st century: social, cultural, and political implications
  • intertextuality and intermediality in religions and literatures
  • feminist, postcolonial, and queer approaches to religious and literary traditions
    If you are interested in participating in this research group, please contact Dr. Luigi De Angelis
    Soriano at luigi.deangelis@huron.uwo.ca and Dr. Shlomo Gleibman at shlomog@gmail.com.

“Literatures and Religions” Research Group update

Dear colleagues,

We are pleased to update you on the progress of the ACLC/CCLA Research Group “Literatures and Religions: Interconnected Narratives.” 

In June 2025, the research group organized two panels at the CCLA conference at Trent University in Peterborough: “Reimagining the Sacred: Reception of Religious Themes in Poetry, Life Narratives, and Films” and “Crossing Boundaries: Intersections Between Religion, Fiction, and Literary Theory.”

The group’s ongoing program continues to attract significant interest, and our membership is expanding. The group meetings occur on a monthly basis via Zoom. At each meeting, we have an informal discussion of a group participant’s current research, such as the presenter’s ideas for their upcoming conference papers or publications (or a dissertation chapter for graduate students). It’s an opportunity to test your ideas, get feedback, ask questions, and think together. We have held seven online seminars so far:

  • December 2024: Shlomo Gleibman (Humanities, York University), “A Queer Genealogy of Havruta: Study Partnership as Intimate Relationship Between Men in Jewish Literature.”
  • January 2025: Luigi De Angelis (Comparative Literature, Western University), “Hesed and Passion: Gabriela Mistral’s Poetic Retelling of the Book of Ruth.”
  • February 2025: Lisa Viviani (Comparative Literature, Western University), “Beauty and the Bad Boy: ‘James Dean Daydream’ Lovers in American and Italian Adolescent Fiction.”
  • March 2025: Maria Ruggero (Comparative Literature, University of Bari Aldo Moro, Italy), “Melusina: The Myth of Femininity and Religion.” 
  • April 2025: Olga Stein (English, York University), “Religious Conversion and Creative [Self-] Reinterpretation in Lyudmila Ulitskaya’s Daniel Stein, Translator.”
  • May 2025: Khedidja Chergui (Department of English, L’Ecole Normale Supérieure de Bouzaréah, Algiers), “On Love Jihad in Contemporary Indian Literature.” 
  • July 2025: Ivan Pavlii (Dallas International University), “Interfaith-Based Study of Contemporary Arab Literature.”

We are taking a summer break in August. Our monthly online seminars will resume on September 6 at 2 pm with a presentation by Laurence Sylvain, President of ACLC/CCLA, on her current research on Simone Weil’s writings.

We invite new members to join our research group. If you are interested in participating in this group, please contact Luigi De Angelis Soriano at ldeange3@uwo.ca and Shlomo Gleibman at shlomog@gmail.com

Wishing you a wonderful rest of the summer,
Shlomo Gleibman and Luigi De Angelis Soriano  
Literatures and Religions: Interconnected Narratives 

Announcing ACLA 2026

Dear Members of the American Comparative Literature Association:

As the Conference Committee Chair, I am pleased to announce that ACLA’s 2026 Annual Meeting will be held in person in Montreal, from February 26 to March 1, 2026.

Following the 2024 Annual Meeting at the Palais des Congrès de Montréal, the Secretariat and the Conference Committee received very positive feedback from ACLA members. The spacious convention center and the diverse cultural offerings of Montreal made the 2024 conference a highly stimulating and memorable experience. The Montreal community, in turn, was pleased to host our conference and eager to welcome us back. Therefore, with a view to reducing conference costs for all members and attendees, we entered discussions with the Palais des Congrès de Montréal about the possibility of returning. I would like to acknowledge ACLA’s Chief Administrative Officer, Danielle Marie, for her tireless efforts in negotiating with the Palais to secure very favorable terms for our return in 2026.

Please note that the dates of the 2026 Annual Meeting are earlier than usual. This scheduling will help us avoid overlapping with major area studies and media studies conferences typically held in March.

The portal for proposing a seminar for ACLA’s 2026 Annual Meeting will open on July 1, 2025. You are invited to submit a seminar proposal by August 8, 2025. A portal through which to submit paper proposals to seminar organizers will open on August 26, 2025.

Each seminar meets multiple times (usually three) to allow for continuous and substantive engagement among participants. This emphasis on long-form collaboration is a hallmark of the ACLA conference. For instance, a seminar meeting over three days may include up to twelve panelists, with three to four participants presenting twenty-minute papers in each session, followed by discussion. We welcome seminars on all topics and areas within Comparative Literature, broadly construed. We especially welcome seminars in areas historically underrepresented in the humanities. The conference is open to participants from both within and beyond the Americas.

While ACLA annual meetings have been held at a variety of venues, we are always looking for campus sponsorship. If your department or university is interested in hosting a future ACLA Annual Meeting (in 2027 or beyond), please get in touch with me.

Finally, I would like to take this opportunity to thank the other members of the Conference Committee during the past year—Karen R. Emmerich (2024–2025 President) and Alexa Alice Joubin—for their contributions to the 2025 Annual Meeting, which concluded earlier this month. Prof. Emmerich organized the opening ceremony and keynote address in addition to delivering her own presidential address, while Prof. Joubin hosted a well-received preconference workshop on AI and pedagogy. I am also grateful to the Executive Committee and the Advisory Committee for organizing other special events. The Program Committee chaired by Jini Kim Watson reviewed countless seminar proposals. CAO Danielle Marie oversaw the building of a brand-new virtual conference platform, which ran seamlessly. Brigid Kennedy managed seminar scheduling and designed a beautiful conference program. Secretary-Treasurer Dina Al-Kassim offered invaluable advice throughout.

Thank you all for making the 2025 Annual Meeting a resounding success. I look forward to working with you and with President Karyn Ball on the 2026 Annual Meeting in Montreal.

Sincerely,

Tze-lan Deborah Sang
Conference Committee Chair, 2024–2027
Professor of Chinese Literature and Media Studies, Michigan State University
E-mail: tzelan (at) msu.edu
Copyright © 2025 American Comparative Literature Association, All rights reserved.

Media Theory at the Coach House: Inaugural Conference 

November 7-8, 2025

Centre for Culture and Technology, University of Toronto

“Media theory seems eclipsed by the ubiquity of its objects” (Rossiter, 2017). This observation from the inaugural issue of our journalis no less relevant today. While Ned Rossiter’s focus was on the prevalence of fake news and on paranoia as a methodological tool, the installation of media forms in all aspects of life continues to present acute practical, cultural, affective, and epistemological challenges—perhaps more than ever. Automation, algorithmic governance, ecological crises, accelerationist billionaires, and the declining influence of activist networks are all intensified by the unraveling of geopolitical order and resurgence of fascism worldwide. This reality presents significant risks and yet has become a commonplace feature of our daily existence.

The Media Theory journal was launched in 2017 to address these mounting challenges by way of deprovincializing the field of inquiry: to disentangle media theory from a predictable constellation of industries, disciplines, traditions, and regions, and equally to question what it means to theorize in a context where, as M. Beatrice Fazi (2017) writes, “high-speed computational operations are now driving both invention and discovery.” In addressing these critical needs, the journal was inspired by a further, and admittedly more speculative aim to move academic publishing towards radical alternatives and experimentation, to push the boundaries of what a journal can be, and ultimately, “to develop a transnational and transdisciplinary forum of debate on media theory and academic publishing” (Dawes, 2017).

Ahead of the journal’s tenth anniversary, we invite proposals for papers for the inaugural conference of the Media Theory Association, held on Friday November 7th and Saturday November 8th, 2025, at the Centre for Culture and Technology, University of Toronto.

Contributions in any aspect of media theory are encouraged, including the following:

– Rethinking definitions of ‘media’, ‘communication’ and ‘communications’;

– Rethinking distinctions between ‘theory’, ‘theories’ and ‘philosophy’;

– Transcending disciplinary boundaries and deprovincializing theoretical debate;

– Readdressing neglected theorists and proposing alternative histories of media theory;

– Critiquing blindspots in dominant approaches and critically engaging with alternative or marginalized perspectives;

– Debating openness, independence, open access, peer-review and the role of an academic journal.

Proposals of up to 500 words, accompanied by an indicative bibliography and a short biographical note, for 15-minute papers should be sent to the editors of the journal, Simon Dawes (UVSQ-Paris Saclay, France) and Joshua Synenko (Trent University, Canada), at editors@mediatheoryjournal.org by June 30th 2025. Please use the subject heading “Media Theory Conference.” Decisions will be confirmed by July 15th 2025.

Participants will also be encouraged to submit full article length versions of their conference papers to the journal by June 1st 2026. Following the usual peer-review process, accepted articles will be published in a special tenth anniversary issue of the journal in 2027.

ABOUT THE JOURNAL

Media Theory (mediatheoryjournal.org) was established in 2017 as an independent (scholar-led), online and (libre) open access journal of peer-reviewed, theoretical interventions into all aspects of media and communications. Resolutely international and interdisciplinary in scope, the journal encourages submissions that critically engage with the theoretical frameworks and concepts that tend to be taken for granted in national or disciplinary perspectives. Following the inaugural issue of ‘Manifestos’ from the editorial collective, the journal has published special issues on ‘Geospatial Memory’, ‘Revolting Media, ‘Rethinking Affordance’, ‘Mediating Presents’, ‘Into the Air’, ‘Pharmacologies of Media’, ‘Critique, Postcritique and the Present Conjuncture’ and ‘Seeing Photographically’, as well as special sections on Ed Herman, Paul Virilio, Michel Serres, Lauren Berlant and Charles W. Mills, with forthcoming issues on ‘Stimulating Media’, ‘Videogame Theory’ and ‘Transnational Technocultures’.

Although the journal privileges an emphasis on theory, the editors are not only concerned with theory for theory’s sake. Rather, we are interested in how theoretically-informed and -engaged interventions can contribute to the interpretation of empirical research and critique, as well as to the deprovincialization of theoretical debate – helping us understand, rather than dismiss or describe, objects of critique, and making us reconsider the validity, efficacy and legitimacy of our own particular methodological approaches.

ABOUT THE KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

Shane Denson is Professor of Film and Media Studies and, by Courtesy, of German Studies and of Communication at Stanford University, where he also serves as Director of the PhD Program in Modern Thought & Literature. His research interests span a variety of media and historical periods, including phenomenological and media-philosophical approaches to film, digital media, and serialized popular forms. He is the author of Post-Cinematic Bodies (meson press, 2023), Discorrelated Images (Duke University Press, 2020) and Postnaturalism: Frankenstein, Film, and the Anthropotechnical Interface (Transcript-Verlag, 2014) and co-editor of several collections: Transnational Perspectives on Graphic Narratives(Bloomsbury, 2013), Digital Seriality (special issue of Eludamos: Journal for Computer Game Culture, 2014), and Post-Cinema: Theorizing 21st-Century Film (REFRAME Books, 2016). See shanedenson.com for more information.

Alessandra Renzi is Associate Professor of Communications, Concordia University. Dr. Renzi’s interdisciplinary work explores the linkages and relays between media, art and civic engagement through community-led research, ethnographic studies and media projects. She has studied pirate television networks in Italy, the surveillance of social movements in Canada after 9-11 and housing and data justice in Indonesia and Canada. Her current research investigates how society’s increasing reliance on platforms, algorithms and AI is changing urban landscapes and community organizing alike. She is the PI of a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Insight Grant titled “On the Margins of the Platform Economy: Community-led Responses to Technical Gentrification,” with focus on Montreal’s Parc Extension neighbourhood. 

ABOUT THE VENUE

The Centre for Culture and Technology is dedicated to theoretical, aesthetic, and critical inquiry into the ways contemporary media shape contemporary forms of experience and our prospects for living together and relating to one another in an interconnected world. In this project, the Centre draws inspiration from Marshall McLuhan’s humanistic intellectual and institutional legacy. In his words, “The object of the Centre is to pursue by a wide variety of approaches an investigation into the psychic and social consequences of technologies.” The Centre’s pursuit of this investigation is dedicated not only to contemporary media and its effects, but also to the contemporary critical approaches necessary for understanding our media: feminist, queer, decolonial, and antiracist.

​Because humanistic media studies gets on in conversation with artists and their work, the Centre will not only pursue humanistic inquiry into contemporary media, but will also foster aesthetic experimentation as a mode of inquiry. McLuhan taught that “media alter our sense ratios.” He also wrote that it is artists who are able to grasp such changes in experience, to bring news of such changes, and to make those changes matters of common concern. Taking this charge seriously, the Centre will support the production of and conversation about contemporary media art. It will also support the study of a wide variety of aesthetic media—fine art, literature, cinema, music, and so on—for their lessons in reckoning with contemporary media. It will, finally, support the study of media aesthetics in an expanded sense, promoting inquiry into the ways technological media shape contemporary experience, by elaborating its histories, its problems, its infrastructures, and its politics.

​The Centre offers both a setting and an institutional framework for this inquiry, providing space and programming for scholars working in humanistic media studies across the three campuses of the University of Toronto and in the GTA.

Call for nomination of CCLA Executive Members

CCLA needs your active involvement. The CCLA’s constitution mandates that it holds elections every two years. Elections are set to be held at the Annual General Meeting at Trent University on June 9. The positions available are: Vice President, Media and Communications Officer, Early Career Scholar Representative, and 6 Members at Large. These roles are crucial for the CCLA’s operation and the organization of its annual gatherings in 2026 and 2027.

Your active participation makes CCLA a strong and vibrant scholarly community. Engaging in these roles is not only a valuable service to the association, the discipline, and the profession, but can also be advantageous for the office holder, both in terms of professional development and academic and research profile.

Details about the positions can be found in the CCLA’s constitution (https://complit.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/ccla-constitution-2014-bilingue-final-1.pdf).

All Executive Members are required to participate in the Executive meetings and AGMs in 2026 and 2027.

If you are interested in being a candidate for any of these positions, in nominating someone else with their consent, or have any questions, please email admin@complit.ca any time prior to the conference. The elections will take place during the AGM on June 9, from 3 to 4.30 pm, and it will still be possible to (self-)nominate at that time.

CFP MLA 2026 Guaranteed Panel: The Afterlives of Protest: Representations of Protest in the Sinophone World

MLA Modern and Contemporary Chinese Literature Executive Committee seeks submissions for a guaranteed panel for MLA 2026 in Toronto.

In the 2010s, Hong Kong and Taiwan emerged into the international spotlight as a result of large scale protests, from the Umbrella Movement, to the Sunflower Movement, to the 2019 anti-security law protests in Hong Kong, largely youth led demonstrations have pushed back against legislative overreach and unpopular legislation. In the ensuing years have enabled directors, writers, and artists to record, reflect upon, and contextualize these events.

This panel aims to spotlight scholarship that examines the emerging body of novels, documentaries, and scholarship on these protests. 

Desired topics include but are not limited to: documentaries that record the protests, novels or memoirs depicting the protests, protest songs and art and other artifacts of protest culture. 

Please submit a 150 word presentation proposal, CV, and indicate whether you are currently a member of the MLA (you must be an MLA member by April 7, 2025) to Clara Iwasaki ciwasaki@ualberta.caby March 15, 2025

CfP for 2025 ICLA Congress

You are welcome to submit a paper proposal to the 2025 ICLA Congress, to be held in Seoul, Korea from 28 July to 1 August 2025. The deadline for submissions is 31 January 2025.

The latest ICLA newsletter contains information on submission, as well as some other information, including the deadline for the Balakian Prize applications. The link to the Newsletter online is at https://www.ailc-icla.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/AILC-ICLA-NEWSLETTER-december-2024.pdf.

CCLA Conference 2025 – Fantastical Constallations CFP

Fantastical Constellations Research Group – Call for Proposals

The Fantastical Constellations After Magical Realism research  group (formerly known as Post-Magical Realist Worlds) of the Canadian Comparative Literature Association (CCLA) invites submissions to our sessions in the upcoming CCLA 2025 Conference taking place June 7-9, 2025 at Trent University, Peterborough/Nogojiwanong, Ontario and online.  

The conference, entitled “Comparative Literature Off-Kilter,” considers “our often off-kilter positionality in (and out of) academia,” and the precarity of the balancing act of comparison. We are asked to conceive the conference “as a playground on which marginal practices, thoughts, works and formats can form revolutionary friendships.”

The Fantastical Constellations Working Group proposes entering this conversation with (1) a round table discussion, and (2) a panel, that together tie into the notion of being “off-kilter,” which we see as an upturning of expected norms, blurring of borderlines, and breaking the boundaries of genres; in other words, being off-kilter in our practice as a lens for a world off-kilter. The ongoing debate over genrefication to which magical realism and other fantastical modes of writing and storytelling are subjected, and their capacity to crash the genres, make our research group well positioned to play in this playground.

  1. Round Table Discussion

We invite submissions to our round table discussion, and are interested in all forms of representation in contemporary literature, cinema, media, and the arts, including popular culture.

Topic: Fantastical and post magical realism after the Anthropocene.

How can, and how do, (post)magical realism and the fantastical function as an ecocritical tool to dismantle the human/non-human binary; to disrupt time and space? How do the Anthropocene and ecocriticism factor into fantastical or magical realist creative practices (writing, film, and so on)? In Climate and Crises, Ben Holgate contends that “magical realism enables writers to portray alternative intellectual paradigms, ontologies and epistemologies that typically contest the scientific rationalism derived from the European Enlightenment, and the exploitation of natural resources associated with both capitalism and imperialism.” The overlap between magical realism and environmental literature, he says, offers “a shared biocentric perspective that focuses on the inter-connectedness of all things in the universe, and, frequently, a critique of postcolonial legacies in formerly colonised territories.” Magical realist techniques, he argues, have the potentiality to blur the species boundaries (human, animal and non-human). In (post)magical realism and fantastical narratives generally does this blurring of boundaries then provide hope for building interspecies solidarities and avoiding anthropomorphisations?

There are many similarly specific possible questions to ask during the round table, but our leading Round Table Question is: Considering concepts of magical realism as explored by Holgate: indeterminacies, instabilities, ambiguities; interconnectedness of all existing things; counter dominant ontologies and epistemologies (Maufort); socio-ecological entanglements, and environmentally oriented fantasy, do Anthropocene literature and the fantastical offer off-kilter solutions and hopeful visions for the future?

To participate in the round table discussion, please submit a 200-250 word abstract for your five-minute manifesto statement as response to the question (as a MS Word attachment) to the Program Chair, Dr. Jeanne Mathieu-Lessard (jeannemathieulessard@gmail.com) by December 15, 2024 (with an annotation “Fantastical Constellations After Magical Realism Round Table”). Please mention whether you can participate in person or online.

With inquiries, please write to: Dr. Jill Planche, jillplanche@gmail.com or Dr. Agata Mergler, agatamer@yorku.ca

  • Panel Session

We invite submissions to our panel session and are interested in discussions of all forms of representation in contemporary literature, cinema, media, and the arts, including popular culture.

Topic: ‘Minor literature’ as a tool in fantastical literature

Deleuze and Guattari’s term “minor literature” draws on Kafka’s use of the German language for writing his works while living in Prague, Czech Republic – fusions of realism and surrealism that are political and subversive. Reflecting this sense of “going against the grain,” Deleuze and Guattari conceive minor literature has three characteristics: “the deterritorialization of language, the connection of the individual to a political immediacy, and the collective assemblage of enunciation” (2003, p. 18). The concept of minor literature “brings to the fore other related terms and concepts such as endangered language, language minority, marginalized language, minorized language, native language, non-territorial language, indigenous language, or even social movements” (Babaei). Can the notion of minor literature and the plethora of terms developed from it, like minor media, minor art practices, minor cultural practices etc. eschew the tension in the “constant movement” of comparison suggested by the conference topic, instead offering constant movement in its more positive sense as a relational process of continual differentiation?

Panel Session Questions might include:

  • magical realism, the fantastic, minor language
  • fantastical and minor literature, minor film, and minor art practice (Deleuze and Guattari)
  • indeterminacies, instabilities, ambiguities (Holgate)
  • minoritarian ontology of generative and relational processes
  • interconnectedness of all existing things
  • counter dominant ontologies and epistemologies (Maufort)
  • emergent modalities of hybrid transnational subjectivity
  • critique of the minor literature terminology use in magical and (post)magical realism scholarship
  • reshaping physical, social and psychological spaces inscribed by legacies of colonial capitalism.

Please submit 200-250 word abstracts for 15-20 minute presentations as MS Word attachments to the Program Chair, Dr. Jeanne Mathieu-Lessard (jeannemathieulessard@gmail.com) by December 15, 2024 (with an annotation “Fantastical Constellations After Magical Realism Panel Session”). Please mention whether you can participate in person or online.

With inquiries, please write to: Dr. Jill Planche, jillplanche@gmail.com or Dr. Agata Mergler, agatamer@yorku.ca

Works Cited:

Babaei, Mehdi. “Minor literature and the language of the minorities.” Belonging, Identity, Language, Diversity Research Group (BILD), 2 Mar 2020. https://bild-lida.ca/blog/uncategorized/minor-literature-and-the-language-of-the-minorities-by-mehdi-babaei/

Deleuze, Giles and Fèlix Guattari. Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature, translated by D. Polan. University of Minnesota Press, 2003.

Holgate, Ben. Climate and Crises; Magical Realism as Environmental Discourse. Routledge, 2019.

Maufort, Jessica. Book Review of Climate and Crises: Magical Realism as Environmental Discourse. EcoZon@, volume 11, number 1, 2020. https://doi.org/10.37536/ecozona.2020.11.1.3265

Join the ASPP Publication Committee

(Version française ci-dessous)

As you may know, the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences offers a program dedicated to funding scholarly books in Canada —the Scholarly Book Awards (ASPP). Each year, this program provides 180 Publication Grants, each valued at $8,000.

At the heart of this program is our Publications Committee, composed of established scholars who evaluate applications and make informed funding recommendations based on each work’s potential contribution to the field. The members of the Publications Committee will have the chance to see a wide variety of cutting-edge research in their discipline. 

We are seeking Committee members who are proficient in English, French, or both, and who have authored at least one scholarly book in their area of expertise. This is a volunteer position with a term of office of three years, for up to two terms.  

Those who are interested can fill out the survey and they will be contacted directly.

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Comme vous le savez peut-être, la Fédération des sciences humaines offre un programme dédié au financement de livres savants au Canada – la Subvention du livre savant (PAES). Chaque année, ce programme offre 180 subventions de publication, chacune d’une valeur de 8 000 $.

Au cœur de ce programme se trouve notre Comité des publications, composé de chercheur.euse.s établi.e.s qui évaluent les candidatures et font des recommandations de financement éclairées basées sur la contribution potentielle de chaque ouvrage au domaine. Les membres du Comité des publications auront l’occasion de voir un large éventail de recherches de pointe dans leur discipline.

Nous recherchons des membres de Comité qui maîtrisent l’anglais, le français ou les deux, et qui ont écrit au moins un livre savant dans leur domaine d’expertise. Il s’agit d’un poste bénévole avec un mandat de trois ans, renouvelable une fois.

Nous vous serions très reconnaissants de nous aider à recommander des candidats appropriés pour le Comité des publications et de partager cette opportunité avec vos membres. Nous vous serions reconnaissants de bien vouloir nous communiquer les noms et les coordonnées des personnes intéressées ou de leur transmettre ce courriel. Vous pouvez également remplir le sondage et nous les contacterons directement.