Dear friends,

Patrick and I just wanted to reach out on behalf of ALA as ask if you would share with your societies a quick reminder about the October gathering in Santa Fe that he and I are organizing. We’re about a five weeks away from the Sept 15 due date for proposals and while we know folks may not know their funding situation (if they have funding, that is) we are hoping to attract as many folks as possible.

The link for the call for papers is here: https://americanliteratureassociation.org/ala-conferences/ala-symposia/

Please feel free to simply share this email if you’d like with your members. We are looking forward to a program that’s broad and inclusive and also fun!  I’m cutting in the Call for Papers here as well.

Many thanks! Kirk

Kirk Curnutt, Ph.D. 
Professor and chair, Department of English, 

Troy University 270 Smith Hall

334-670-3308

ALA Symposium 

Wildness and Wilderness 

October 26-28, 2023 

Drury Plaza Hotel in Santa Fe
828 Paseo de Peralta
Santa Fe, NM 87501 

Conference Directors:
Patrick Bonds & Kirk Curnutt, Troy University 

Keynote Speaker:
TBA 

Conference Fee: $175 

For our 2023 Fall Symposium, the American Literature Association will return to beautiful Santa Fe, New Mexico. The Drury Plaza Hotel offers excellent rates and is perfectly located near the central plaza. Single and double rooms will be available for $135 a night plus taxes. This rate includes not only a free breakfast and wireless access, but also a “kickback” every evening at 5:30, featuring hot food and cold drinks. Valet parking will be $10 per night.  

Unfamiliar, unexplored, and unsettled places have long captivated the American literary imagination. While the expanse of the physical natural world untouched by humans has considerably shrunk in size, Gary Snyder in “The Etiquette of Freedom” (1990) reminds us that wildness remains an unstable energy in beings in any environment. We are interested in competing definitions and representations of not only wilderness but especially of wildness in “settled” spaces in all genres and forms of American literature: from urban chaos and apocalypse to the “ordered wildness” of ecopoetics in textual environments and texts-as-environments to conservationist rewilding and the complexities of undoing domestication. While we will consider papers on any topic or author relevant to American literary traditions, we look forward to submissions that metaphorically link subject matter and creative practice, asking, for example, what ways form might be considered an energy field defined by the need to harness wildness without extinguishing it. And whether we think of wilderness as sacred, shrinking, imagined, or simulated, how has the spectacle of wildness impinged upon every acre of the American scene? 

Please send all proposals to the Conference Directors at
Patrick Bonds at pbonds@troy.edu 

or 

Kirk Curnutt at kcurnutt@troy.edu
as soon as possible and no later than September 15, 2023.

 

Conference Details:  Sessions run Friday and Saturday, October 27-28, 2023. There will be an opening event and welcoming reception on Thursday evening, October 26. The Conference Fee of $175 includes one luncheon as well as receptions. 

Individuals may propose papers, panels, or roundtables by emailing the Conference Directors, Professors Patrick Bonds pbonds@troy.edu or Kirk Curnutt kcurnutt@troy.edu no later than September 15, 2023, and preferably earlier. The proposal should include the title of the presentation or panel, an abstract that provides a clear idea of the material that will be covered, a brief vita or description of the presenter’s qualifications, and the email addresses for all participants. The proposal should be both pasted into an email and sent as an attachment (preferably in WORD). All emails will be acknowledged in a timely manner. 

Those proposing papers and/or panels will be informed of acceptances by September 20, and hotel reservations will need to be made before September 25.  Participants will be asked to make their hotel reservations immediately and to pay the conference fee by pre-registering on-line by October 15.  A program will be placed on the ALA website prior to our meeting, and printed programs will be available at the symposium. 

ALA Guidelines: The most common ALA format is a time slot of one hour and twenty minutes with three papers and a chair. This permits time for discussion and three papers of approximately 20 minutes (or nine typed double-spaced pages). Organizers of panels are free to use other formats provided they respect the time limits. Furthermore, the ALA encourages panel organizers to experiment with innovative formats including discussion groups and panels featuring more speakers and briefer papers. Chairs will make sure that the panels start and end on time and that no speaker goes beyond the allotted time limit.  We prefer that chairs not present papers on the panels that they are moderating, and no one may present more than one paper at an ALA symposium. 

AV:  Please note that we are not able to provide AV at this symposium.  

Conference Registration: The conference fee of $175 covers the costs of the conference. We require all of those who are on the program to pre-register by October 15, 2023. Please see the website for the on-line registration link. If you wish to pay by check, you may find the mail-in registration form on our website. The conference fee is $175 for all participants.  We regret that we are unable to offer a lower rate for graduate students and independent scholars. If you have a question or concern regarding registration, please contact Olivia Carr Edenfield, Director of the ALA, at carr@georgiasouthern.edu. 

ALA Membership: Membership in the ALA is not required in order to propose or present a paper.  In fact, technically the members of the American Literature Association are the various author societies. Individuals may keep informed about the activities of the ALA, including our symposia and conferences, by checking our website (www.americanliteratureassociation.org). 

Please note that the American Literature Association maintains the lowest conference fees of any major scholarly organization because it operates without a paid staff. If you have any questions that are not answered by this announcement, please contact the Conference Directors. 

Thank you for your interest and your support of the American Literature Association.