2025 CALL FOR PAPERS

52nd Annual Louisville Conference on Literature & Culture
FEB 17-18 – Virtual
FEB 20-22 – In-Person
Featuring Keynote Speakers
RACHEL KUSHNER, BEN LERNER, JAHAN RAMAZANI,
and GEORGIE MEDINA MARCANO!

The Louisville Conference on Literature & Culture welcomes critical papers and full panel discussions about literature from the 20th and 21st centuries and its connections to other art forms and academic fields. The conference also welcomes creative submissions, such as literary compositions, videos, or hybrid genres. Additionally, critical-creative submissions exploring poetics, crafts, or writing practices are welcomed.

Confirmed LCLC52 events include The Hero Project of the Century: Tyrone Williams As iZ (Aldon Nielsen, organizer) and The Function of Music in Poetry (Adeena Karasick and Mark Scroggins, organizers). And so much more to come!

VENDORS and EXHIBITORS are welcome. Contact Emily Ravenscraft, Conference Coordinator at lclc@louisville.edu to learn how you can be a part of LCLC52.

Submissions are accepted in English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Hebrew, and Italian. Panels involving global literature and culture in other languages are encouraged. We also encourage proposals that bring together people from different universities or organizations, with varying levels of experience in academia, and from various fields of study. Recent society participants include the African American Literature & Culture Society, Charles Olson Society, E.E. Cummings Society, International Harold Pinter Society, International Lawrence Durrell Society, International Virginia Woolf Society, Iris Murdoch Society, T.S. Eliot Society, among others.

Conference registrants may participate in up to two of the following activities: (1) a critical, critical-creative, or group/society panel; (2) a creative session; (3) or as the leader of a seminar. Additionally, registrants may also chair one or more panels, as well as participate in seminars. Submissions are limited to one entry per category.

Deadline for submissions is 11:59 P.M. EST on September 15, 2024.

SUBMISSION PROCESS
Email submissions to lclc@louisville.edu
Please use the Subject line exactly: LCLC52 Submission, [Type of submission]
Example: LCLC52 Submission, Roundtable Session

Submission Components:

Individual Critical / Critical-Creative Submissions
Please send as 2 separate attachments
1) Cover sheet: Name as it is to appear in program with any institutional affiliation, Paper Title, and a biographical statement (250 words).
2) Abstract: be sure to omit all references to the author and the author’s name (250-300 words).

Individual Creative Submissions
Please send as 2 separate attachments
1) Cover Sheet: Name as it is to appear in program with any institutional affiliation, Title of Work Submitted, and a biographical statement (250 words).
2) Writing Sample: suitable for a 15-20 minute presentation.

Full Panels, Roundtables and Societies Sessions (single panels or streams) Submissions:
Sessions are to be designed for a 90-minute time slot. The organizer should submit the following documents:
Please send as 2 separate attachments
1) Cover Sheet: Names and Institutional Affiliations, Titles of Work Submitted, biographical statements.
2) Dependent on the subject of the submission please submit either:
a) Abstract: be sure to omit all references to the author and the author’s name (250-300 words).
b) Writing Sample: suitable for a 15-20 minute presentation



SEMINARS. These 120 minutes sessions typically feature informal conversation moderated by the seminar leader(s) on the topic and or activity. If you wish to propose a seminar for LCLC52, contact LCLC Coordinator Emily Ravenscraft and we will evaluate it in advance of our second CFP which will be circulated in August 2024. See below for the current line-up of for this the current LCLC52 seminars. Each seminar has it’s own process for submission, so please read the descriptions carefully.

SEMINAR I
Translation Chapbook Workshop and Reading
Dr. Mark Mattes & Dr. Clare Sullivan
Participants will take part in a bookbinding workshop led by Dr. Mattes of Louisville-based Hot Brown Press and create chapbooks of their translations. All tools and materials will be provided. Then, in a subsequent panel, chapbook contributors will share their work and participate in a group discussion led by LCLC committee member Dr. Clare Sullivan. Participants should submit 1) Cover sheet and 2) Sample of original, unpublished translations into English from any language. Limit your selection to 150 words - excerpts are fine. Include the source text with your submission and a brief citation.

SEMINAR II
Poetry, Games, and Magic
Dr. Brandon Harwood & Dr. Robert Eric Shoemaker
This seminar explores the interplay between poetry, magic, and games. What similarities, practical and theoretical, may be drawn from these fields? How can the poetics of play, or the magic circle of the video game, inform our understanding and practice of each? What do today's multimedia games and poetries say about or to ancient rituals, sociocultural stratification, or morality and purity rules? What openings do we see in language and culture to bend rules in order to break open systems? Participants should submit 1) Cover sheet and 2) Abstract touching two of these fields: game studies, poetry/poetics, and the magical/occult.

SEMINAR III
Pandemic Studies
Martha Greenwald, Seminar Leader
Participants will pursue the imaginative structures, disputed narratives, cross-pollinating conspiracies, and contested discourses used to make sense of COVID-19 as well as other past, contemporaneous, or future pandemics. As we accept that life now is increasingly lived with the COVID-19 virus as a normalized and never-ending event, Narrative frameworks and genres of the pandemic experience have shifted and need now additional study. We seek surprising, ambitious, theoretically-rich, and provocative response. Participants should submit 1) Cover sheet and 2) Abstract. Contributions that introduce fiction or generic hybridity are welcome.