Deadline Approaching! MCLLM 2017

The deadline for submissions and abstracts to the 25th annual Midwestern Conference on Literature, Language and Media (MCLLM) is at the end of this month, Friday, January 27!

Hosted annually by Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, IL, MCLLM is seeking proposals for 15-minute paper from individuals and panels on humanities research – especially graduate student submissions.

Interested students can submit 200-500 word proposals to mcllm@niu.edu. Please include name, institutional afiliation, email, and phone number of each author. Panel proposals should include a brief overview of the panel’s theme and purpose, along with a 200-500 word abstract for each paper. The conference takes place April 7-8.

Graduate students have the opportunity to apply for two separate awards designed to waive fees and assist out-of-town students.

This years theme Altered States, Times, Perspectives has a broad scope designed to encourage a variety of stimulating argument-driven papers on topics such as the following:

  • Biographical Studies
  • Utopia/Dystopia
  • Time Travel
  • Space Travel
  • Travel Narratives (“road” movies, novels, etc.)
  • Historical change
  • Political change
  • Changes in an author’s work (or changes in the notions of authorship)
  • Changes in critical framework
  • Minority approaches/voices
  • Changing conceptions (of gender, race, identity, class, time, etc.)
  • Loss, displacement, destruction
  • Gain, (re)placement, (re)construction

Anne Lake Prescott, emerita professor of English and Comparative Literature at Barnard College, Columbia University will be this years keynote speaker.

The Chuck Bowie Student Participation Awards provide a total of $1000 to support graduate student participation in MCLLM. This total helps provide a waiver of registration fees ($40 each) for 12 local graduate student presenters, and two larger prizes of $260 each to graduate student presenters from out of town. Eligibility would be based on graduate student status and strength of the proposal.

The Emily Hipchen Bowie Autobiography Studies Award offers $500 for a graduate student presenting on something related to autobiography/life writing studies. Emily Hipchen Bowie is the editor of the prominent, internationally known scholarly journal a/b: Auto/Biography Studies, the journal of record for life writing. Many of the issues of the journal have become Routledge books. Emily is graciously offering a prize for a graduate student conference attendee working on “life writing research.” Any graduate student attending the conference and presenting on a topic in this area is eligible. Awarded based on the strength of the proposal.

For full information, please visit the conference website.