NeMLA 2021: 52nd Northeast Modern Language Association Convention

Philadelphia, PA 

March 11-14, 2021

 

18582: Francophone African Women Writers Embracing Eco-Feminism (WIF session) (Panel) Chair: Anna Rocca (Salem State University)

This panel welcomes papers exploring francophone African women writers’ narratives that approach human life as deeply embedded in both nature and culture. Some themes of consideration should include, among others: how literary accounts expose the intersectional ties among environmentalism, anti-colonial struggle, and social justice; in what ways African female writers challenge unjust, ecologically destructive forms of imperial development and engage in alternative forms of ecofeminist environmental ethics; how they represent the double oppressions of women and nature; and finally, how do women writers depict communitarian and relational living, and interdependence between humans and nature.

DEADLINE for Abstract Submission: September 30, 2020

SUBMIT HERE: https://www.cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/18582

 

18583. Visual Africa: Francophone Women's Aesthetic Representations of Africa (WIF session) (Roundtable) Chair: Anna Rocca (Salem State University)

This panel invites papers on francophone African women's artistic and cinematic representations of contemporary Africa. How do African women artists relate with stereotypes and essential notions and visual representations of Africa, the latter created for Westerners' consumption? How do female artists appropriate and imagine cultural heritage? Are they defining new aesthetics and perspectives of belonging and (national) identity? Do women artist posit a multiplicity of shifting ranging from static binary categories such as North/South, black/white, African/European, foreign /national, to overlapping identity formation as well as localized, situational, and/or hyphenated identities?

DEADLINE for Abstract Submission: September 30, 2020

SUBMIT HERE: https://www.cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/18583

 ***

Currently, and provided that city and state officials sanction meetings of groups of 250 or more in March, NeMLA is planning for an in-person conference. NeMLA will of course take all steps to ensure participants’ safety (adjusting seating capacity, following social distancing rules, using masks and working with the hotel to respect health guidelines). In October, Chairs will assess where presenters stand as well.

Femmes dérangées, femmes dérangeantes / Disturbed and Disruptive Women

Women in French UK-Ireland Biennial Conference

7th-9th May 2021, Maynooth University, Ireland

 

Confirmed Keynotes:

Naomi Fontaine

Innu First Nation Writer from Uashat, Québec.

Giovanna Murillo Rincon

Paris-based activist committed to supporting the most vulnerable of QTIPOC subjects (Queer, Transgender and Intersex People of Colour).

 

The labels ‘dérangées’ and ‘dérangeantes’, which we might loosely translate as ‘disturbed’ and ‘disruptive’, have long been applied to women throughout the course of history. Once a woman does not correspond to the societal expectations and norms that supposedly define ‘proper womanhood’, be that in terms of appearance, behaviour, beliefs or situation, she is cast aside and held in contempt. ‘Good’ women are those who do not disturb and disrupt the patriarchy, but, rather, conform to and uphold systems of male privilege.

On the flipside, disturbance and disruption by women can often allow for the destabilisation of such androcentric systems. Women who have challenged the status quo in extraordinarily productive ways have often been the most ‘disturbed’ or ‘disruptive’, from the suffragettes to Cixous’ laughing Medusa, from Colette the author to Despente’s murderous heroines. Feminist action has literally made waves to see effective change take place. This is particularly apparent in the creative expression of women, typified in the 70s by the theorisation of écriture féminine: women have historically deployed experimental narrative forms to develop a way of writing that they could truly call their own, that was noticeably different from a male-dominated literary tradition. Content as well as form has also been of fundamental importance. By talking about their own, feminine experiences and desires in literature or art, women have been committing a de facto subversive act. ‘Women’s issues’ ̶ be that menstruation, the menopause, or women’s sexual desire ̶ have been historically absent from cultural representation, as demonstrably taboo subject material. This explains in part the popularity of autofiction as a genre across contemporary women’s writing in French.

Disruptive action also involves a dissolution of the singular category of ‘woman’ itself, that all too frequently equates the experience of cis-gendered, white, middle-class women with that of all womxn. This monolithic and binary reading of feminine identity not only silences marginal members of our societies further, but also overlooks the transformative power which they can bring to the feminist cause. Trans women in particular have all too often been deemed ‘disturbed’ by transphobic voices in the media (not least from a certain subsection of the feminist community), yet are arguably the most proactive as a group when it comes to dismantling sexist and misogynist ideology. 

Interestingly and distressingly, then, what constitutes a form of disturbance or disruption on the part of women is often defined by other women. Disturbed or disruptive women are frequently policed by ‘good’ women. Some notoriously disruptive women have also caused disruption that has worked both in the favour of feminist action, and against it. We have only to think of Germaine Greer’s controversial comments on trans women, or Catherine Deneuve’s derisory reaction to the #MeToo campaign in Le Monde. A re-evaluation of the selected terms and of their application can thus enable us to identify (and hopefully reduce) the less obvious reaches of patriarchal power.

The theme that we have selected for WIF 2021 is evidently one that is rich in interpretation. We encourage our participants to reflect on the different ways in which women in French and Francophone literature, culture, cinema and politics partake in interrupting traditional definitions of femininity and, furthermore, how such transgressions are received and judged. We are, however, particularly interested in papers that consider one or more of the following sub-headings as well as proposals related to our keynote speakers:

• Women and Mental Health
• ‘Bad’ Mothers/Transgressive Mothering
• Women and Sexual Deviance
• ‘Disgusting’ Women
• Women and Anger
• Female Violence and Crime
• Dangerous Women
• Selfish Women
• Disorderly and Misbehaving Women
• Eco-Feminism and Eco-Feminist Warriors
• Migrant and Marginalised Women
• Women and Ageing
• Female Intellectuals
• Women and Revolt
  
   

One Book, One WiF

In partnership with our colleagues in WiF North America, WiF UK is furthering the 'One Book, One WiF' project that began in 2017. The aim of this initiative is to help promote critical interest in less known French and francophone women writers and thus to increase the readership of their corpus. The author for the 2021 conference is Naomi Fontaine and the text is Kuessipan (2011). Proposals for papers or a panel on this book or the author in general are welcomed.

Proposals are welcome in both English and French.

Please send abstracts of no more than 250 words and a brief bio to the following email address: wifmaynooth@gmail.com 

Deadline: 15/09/20

For general queries, please contact Julie Rodgers or Polly Galis.

julie.rodgers@mu.ie

p.galis@bristol.ac.uk  

Please find attached the call for papers for the ACSUS (Association for Canadian Studies in the United States) conference, to take place in October 2021 in Washington DC--if all goes well. The theme of the proposed meeting, "Canada: Far and Near," seems particularly apt in this summer of isolation.

Announcement: ACSUS 2021 Call for Papers - FINAL.pdf 

Framing Narratives:  NEMLA, 52nd Annual Convention

March 11-12, 2021 | Philadelphia, PA

Dear Colleagues,

Please consider submitting an abstract for the following session at NEMLA in Philadelphia, PA, March 11-14, 2021. Abstracts (300 words+ short bio) must be received by September 30 at: 

 https://www.cfplist.com/nemla/User/SubmitAbstract/18915

Comparative Literature / Cultural Studies and Media Studies Panel:

The notion of “frame narratives” has a long and honorable history in narratological studies and is updated here under the theme of the 2021 NEMLA convention “Tradition and Innovation.” How narratives are framed visually is a subject in fields as chronologically separated as 21st-century research on graphic novels and comics and the study of framed miniatures in illustrated Medieval manuscripts. This session proposes to update the traditional narratological conception of “frame narratives” to include the interpretive consequences of visual, in addition to rhetorical, framing. Proposals from different national literatures and time periods are welcome.

Call for Papers: Women in French panels @ the 2020 South Atlantic Modern Language Association conference.

At this time the organizers remain hopeful that the conference will take place as planned in Jacksonville, Florida from November 13-15.

Please consider sending a proposal in French or English to the chairs of Panels 1-4 (listed below) by July 15, 2020.

For more information on SAMLA and the annual conference, please visit the conference website:  https://samla.memberclicks.net/

We appreciate your support and thank you for your consideration.

***

1. Women, Life Writing, and Scandals of Self-Revelation

As life writing exposes purported truths about personal experience and identity, self-revelations in these accounts position these texts as potential objects of controversy as authors test the limits of telling all. Many authors have turned to life-writing practices to speak about intimate loss, family secrets, stolen childhoods, and physical, psychological, or historical trauma.  In this way, autobiography, autofiction, and memoir, remain potentially perilous terrains especially regarding the implications of others on which such self-accounts unavoidably depend. This panel seeks to explore the scandals behind or beyond such self-revelation. How has scandal served as impetus for textual creation? In what ways has the publication of “scandalous” texts implicated others whether in accusation, in solidarity, or by engaging in broader controversies or social discontent? How have such texts responded to scandal? What role do legal proceedings play in (self)censoring self-accounts? Proposals on examples of women engaged with or implicated in scandalous self-revelations in literature, film, theatre, and other modes of representation from all time periods and all areas of Francophone literature are welcome. Please send 250-word proposals in English or French along with presenter’s name, academic affiliation, and email to Adrienne Angelo (ama0002@auburn.edu) by June 1, 2020.

Chair: Adrienne Angelo, Auburn University, <ama0002@auburn.edu>

 

2. Scandalous Silence: Recovering the Rebellious Voices of Gisèle Pineau’s Oeuvre

For nearly three decades, Gisèle Pineau’s writing project has spanned genres, using children’s stories, hybrid visual and narrative texts, fiction, and autofiction to address longstanding questions about Antillean women’s subjectivity, memory, racism in contemporary France, and the protean ramifications of the history of slavery. Despite the sustained and valuable scholarly interest in Pineau’s work, many of her texts have received surprisingly little critical attention. Indeed, Pineau has penned more than a dozen full-length works since the publication of her famous 1996 auto-fictional L’Exil selon Julia; yet, these texts have not garnered the scholarship they warrant. This panel therefore seeks to foreground lesser-known works by Pineau in the aim of generating a more comprehensive understanding of the richness of her writing career and the breadth of her inquiry into enduring issues of gender, race, history, and Antillean identity.

Revised and expanded conference proceedings will be considered for a potential edited volume on Pineau.

Please send 250-300 word abstracts in English or French to Lisa Connell and Delphine Gras at lconnell@westga.edu and dgras@fgcu.edu by June 1, 2020.

Chairs: Lisa Connell, University of West Georgia <lconnell@westga.edu> and Delphine Gras, Florida Gulf Coast University <dgras@fgcu.edu>

 

3. French and Francophone Women Who Break the Rules and Change the World

This panel welcomes papers focused on explorations of rule-breaking in French and Francophone women’s writing, film, and other art forms. How do these women initiate and navigate change, shift social order, and contest inequities? Examinations of the liminal spaces between tradition and new order and the ways in which these texts challenge limitations of nationality, class, race, sex, and language are particularly welcome.

Papers may be in French or English and may not exceed 20 minutes. Please send a 250-word abstract, brief bio and A/V requests to Susan Crampton-Frenchik, scramptonfrenchik@washjeff.edu by June 1, 2020.

Chair: Susan Crampton-Frenchik, Washington & Jefferson College, <scramptonfrenchik@washjeff.edu>

 

4. Making Art, Breaking Rules: Gender-Bending, “Genre-Bending,”  by French and Francophone Women Writers

In French and Francophone societies, where men have historically dominated the arts, a woman daring to assert her own voice is already in itself an act of rebellion. On the one hand, by entering the literary and artistic landscape, women writers and artists transgress society’s expectations of their roles in the domestic sphere as only mothers, wives, and obedient daughters. On the other hand, by taking up the pen, women directly challenge artistic traditions dominated by men, or enter into forbidden territories. This panel will examine how French and Francophone women authors play with gender-bending and “genre-bending” in their works, in their lives, and in their critique of society and the artistic traditions they choose to write in or write back at. Among the questions one may ask are: How do women creators confront the “scandal” of their role as artists?  How do they negotiate scandal and censorship? How do they bend or break the rules of the genres they take on? How do politics inform and influence their works and their identities as women authors? Proposals on French and Francophone literatures, films, and other art forms are welcome. Papers may be in English or French.  Please send 250-word proposals in English or French to Cathy Leung (cleung34@gmail.com) by June 1, 2020 along with presenter’s academic affiliation, contact information, and A/V requirements.

Chair: Cathy Leung <cleung34@gmail.com>

 

5. Breaking Boundaries: Teaching Diversity and Inclusion in the French Classroom

This panel (or potentially roundtable) seeks contributions that will engage with questions of teaching inclusion through breaking boundaries that limit our students. Presenters may suggest how to make the French Studies classroom a welcoming, inclusive, and productive learning environment. We will propose ways an educator can help increase diversity, inclusivity, tolerance, quality, and success in the French and Francophone classroom. Presentations addressing underrepresented populations, rethinking the terms related to diversity, identity, and being, as well ways to recognize systemic racism, sexism, ableism and unconscious bias are welcome. How can our teaching adapt to diverse student needs but also incorporate their realities as an invaluable resource of knowledge and understanding? How can we include cultural content which is interpretable or relatable to what students see and experience as a means to getting them to engage productively, perhaps even creatively, in a diverse world? 

Please send 250-word proposals to E. Nicole Meyer (nimeyer@augusta.edu) by June 1, 2020 along with presenter’s academic affiliation, contact information, and A/V requirements.

Chair: E. Nicole Meyer, Augusta University, <nimeyer@augusta.edu>

2^nd Call for Papers for Women in French panel @ the SCMLA Annual Conference

The Whitehall Hotel, Houston, Texas, October 8-10, 2020

We are announcing the second Call for Papers for the WIF panel at the South Central Modern Language Association 2020 conference at the Whitehall Hotel in Houston, Texas, October 8-10, 2020. This year's theme is "Politics of Protest," but you may propose a paper on any topic related to the study of French and Francophone women authors, the study of women's place in French and Francophone cultures or literature, and/or feminist literary criticism. If there is sufficient interest, SCMLA will allow us to have 2 sessions. 

The deadline for all abstracts has been extended. Please send a 250-300 word abstract in French or English on any topic by April 10, 2020 to the Chair: Theresa Kennedy, Baylor University, (Theresa_Kennedy@baylor.edu). The SCMLA is paying close attention to the evolving situation with COVID-19, and will act accordingly. SCMLA will update members if any change of plans becomes necessary.

If your proposal is accepted, you will be notified before April 30, 2020. Presenters must become SCMLA members by the time of the conference. All conference participants must reserve their rooms with the Whitehall Hotel by September 22, 2020 in order to receive the conference rate. More info may be found on the conference website: https://www.southcentralmla.org/conference/ 

All those interested in Women in French are encouraged to attend. Theresa Kennedy will organize dinner or lunch out for all WIF panelists and any other WIF members who would like to join. Please do not hesitate to contact Dr. Kennedy if you have any questions (Theresa_Kennedy@baylor.edu). We look forward to seeing you in Houston!

We are pleased to announce the following Women in French guaranteed session and two non-guaranteed sessions. Please send a 250-300 word abstract in English or French along with a short biography to the following chairs no later than March 6, 2020.

MLA 2021 Women in French Guaranteed Session: "She Persisted Across Borders: Transnational Women's Writing in French" 

How do women writers represent the transnational? How do they create works that span borders and/or that blur the boundaries between nations? How do they create literary texts that resist easy categorization into national literatures? Since transnational writing is currently a major area of academic enquiry, it is timely to examine how women writers negotiate this terrain.

This panel will compare writing by women authors from diverse parts of the Francosphere and, since it is important to historicize transnational writing, from different time periods. The panel will be open to proposals that discuss all literary genres.

Proposals may analyse, through a gendered lens, topics such as:

• forced and unforced migration;
• refugee narratives;
• translingual and multilingual writing;
• the differences between postcolonial, migrant and transnational writing;
• the impact of publication practices upon transnational writing;
• the career trajectories of transnational writers;
• the reception of transnational writing;
• transnational writing and translation;
• the preponderance of transnational writing at a time of increased nationalism.

Chair: Natalie Edwards, University of Adelaide (natalie.edwards@adelaide.edu.au)

 

MLA 2021 Women in French 2 Non-Guaranteed Sessions:

1. "Persistance de la jeune fille (1850-2020)"

Qu’il s’agisse des affaires Polanski ou Ruggia pour le monde cinématographique, voire de l’affaire Matzneff pour celui des lettres, la jeune-fille semble le point central de ce que serait un effet « Me-Too », sinon Weinstein en France. Au cœur de débats de société qui reposent sur les témoignages de femmes adultes qui reviennent sur ce qui leur est arrivé lorsqu’elles étaient jeunes filles, scintille donc le concept, toujours complexe et instable de la « jeune fille ». De fait, la jeune-fille est-elle cet être qui se définit par négation sinon soustraction, et qui est marginalisée tout en étant célébrée et mythifiée par un certain regard masculin, voire par la publicité. Aussi, cette session se propose-t-elle de donner à entendre ce qu’est une jeune fille. Des interventions revenant sur ces affaires et sur les témoignages récents sont attendues, mais une réflexion transhistorique sur la notion de « jeune fille », ainsi que des analyses des romans de jeune fille au XIXème siècle, des travaux sur leur place dans le cinéma français des années 1960 ou de Sophia Coppola, voire sur la manière dont Tiqqun  ou Despentes traitèrent la question seraient tout autant bienvenues.  

Chair :  Virginie A. Duzer, Pomona College (virginie.pouzet-duzer@pomona.edu)

2. "Secrecy as Survival and Resistance in French and Francophone Literature"

To whom are secrets revealed, and from whom are they concealed? How can secrets ensure survival, or threaten it? Do practices of secrecy aid marginalized cultures to resist erasure? Those who inherit, harbor, or disclose secrets do so for various reasons. The “secret of secrecy” constitutes the mystery of not only what it means to be fully human, but also what it means to persist despite threats to cultural and linguistic survival, especially for marginalized or subjugated individuals and communities: people of color, refugees, and peripheral cultures. Women, too, adopt practices of secrecy to protect themselves.

For Derrida, the absolute "secret" that "has to do with not-belonging" and "the sharing of what is not shared" is integral to memory and storytelling (Derrida and Ferraris, 58-59). Derrida articulates his thoughts on secrecy in The Gift of Death (1992), and again with philosopher Maurizio Ferraris in A Taste for the Secret (first published 1997). In The Gift of Death, Derrida re-narrates the story of the sacrifice of Isaac to uncover an original constitutive trauma, a secret that humans inherit, which imposes a violence at the origin of all discourse. When Derrida writes about le secret in French, the word contains polysemic meaning for both the object as secret, hidden, confidential, and the concept and practice of secrecy, keeping things unknowable. But what happens when the unknowable or unknown becomes known? This panel will explore the inevitable trauma associated with secrets and the self in French-language literature, and how secrecy is related to what we do to survive.

Derrida, Jacques. Trans. David Wills. The Gift of Death. U of Chicago, 1996.

Derrida, Jacques, and Maurizio Ferraris. A Taste for the Secret. Polity, 2001.

Co-chairs:

Lisa Karakaya, Graduate Center, CUNY (lkarakaya@gradcenter.cuny.edu) and

Antoinette Williams-Tutt, Graduate Center, CUNY (awilliams2@gradcenter.cuny.edu)

 

Call for Papers for Women in French

2020 Midwest Modern Language Association Convention

Milwaukee, Wisconsin

November 5-8, 2020

Chères/Chers Collègues,

I am pleased to announce the Call for Papers for WIF at the 2020 MMLA Convention (November 5-8 in Milwaukee, WI). This year’s theme is “Cultures of Collectivity.”

Please send a 250-word abstract in French or English along with your academic affiliation, brief bio, and A/V requirements to Jennifer Howell, Illinois State University, jthowel@ilstu.edu by May 31, 2020. Proposals for complete panels are also welcome.

Notifications will be sent by June 10, 2020. All presenters must be current members of both the Midwest Modern Language Association and Women in French in order to participate. Additional information can be found on the conference website:

https://www.luc.edu/mmla/convention/

All those interested in Women in French are encouraged to attend. I will also organize a dinner out for all WIF panelists and WIF members who would like to join us. Please don’t hesitate to contact me if you have any questions – and please excuse any glitches that may occur this year (I’m new!). We look forward to seeing you in Milwaukee!

Respectfully yours,

Jennifer Howell, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of French and Francophone Studies @ Illinois State University

Women in French Midwest Regional Representative

As an Allied Organization of the MLA, Women in French is guaranteed one session at the MLA Convention in Toronto, 7-10 January 2021. The Presidential Theme for the 2021 convention is Persistence. If you wish to propose a topic for our guaranteed session, please submit it by January 30, 2020 to Arline Cravens via email:  arline.cravens@slu.edu.

Please limit your description to 200-250 words. Your topic will then be presented to the membership for an electronic vote. Normally, the person who proposes the session also chairs the session. A call for papers will then be posted on the MLA site and sent out to all members of WIF.  

We are also eligible to propose two non-guaranteed sessions as well.

Please do not hesitate to contact Arline Cravens (arline.cravens@slu.edu) if you have any questions. 

If you are interested in chairing a WIF panel at the 2020 South Atlantic Modern Language Association (SAMLA) annual conference, please send a call for papers by January 20, 2020 to Dr. Adrienne Angelo (ama0002@auburn.edu).

Provide the following information:

1) title of session;

2) contact information of panel chair;

3) a 150-200-word description of the panel;

4) details for panel applicants, such as requested abstract length, submission deadline (May 15, 2020 suggested), any other special requests for submissions (i.e. brief bios, CVs, academic affiliation, etc.).

The 2020 SAMLA conference is taking place from November 13-15, 2020 in Jacksonville, Florida.

The theme of next year’s SAMLA conference is "Scandal! Literature and Provocation: Breaking Rules, Making Texts." Feel free to interpret that theme as broadly as possible, and you are also invited to propose a panel on another topic, too.