For All Academics/Writers Who Read Alas: A Call for Papers You Might be Interested In

In April 2014, I will be chairing a seminar called “Writers & Critics: Gender Studies Forum” at the Northeast Modern Language Association’s annual conference in Harrisberg, Pennsylvania (April 3-6). The conference website is here and the full CFP page is here. Listed as a seminar–which is a technical term within NeMLA–the panel, described below, is an experiment, and I’m looking to get proposals from as wide a range of writers and critics as possible. The deadline to submit a proposal is September 30th. Please forward this to anyone you know who might be interested in participating.

Writers & Critics: Gender Studies Forum

While the dichotomy between scholarship and creative writing is in some sense a false one, it is also true that these two kinds of writing “come at” the issues they deal with from very different perspectives, using very different tools. This session seeks to explore the generative potential of those differences—for the classroom, for scholarship, for writing—by pairing published creative writers with scholars in a critical discussion using the writers’ own work as a starting point. Thematically, the session will focus on feminism/gender studies. (Please address the theme in your proposal.) Because this is a new kind of panel that will require some interaction between and among myself and the panelists before NeMLA 2014, flexibility is important since the nature of the proposals I receive will likely influence the final form the panel takes. My goal is to introduce attendees to new work and ideas that they can use in their classrooms, their research, and/or their creative writing. Again, since this is a new kind of panel, I am open as to the form and content of proposals—especially since people who are creative writers can also (obviously) be scholars and vice versa—but here are some rough guidelines. Except for the word limit, please feel free to bend them:

• For creative writers: a brief excerpt from the work you propose for discussion, including bibliographical information, and a 250-300 word paragraph explaining how you think it would fit into this panel.
• For scholars: a 300-500 word discussion of your research interests and their relevance to this panel.
• For scholar-writer pairs: something that combines the above two proposals.