The Hope of Hybridity (Modern Language Association (MLA) 2025 Convention)
New Orleans, LA
Organization: Modern Language Association
Event: Modern Language Association (MLA) 2025 Convention
Appropriately for a word broadly defined as “having a mixed character,” the idea of “hybridity” has elicited contradictory interpretation since its inception in the Greek word hybris. While the word could mean miscegenation, shame, wantonness, outrage, and even violence, the term carried the alternate but equally valid connotation of thinking and moving beyond human limitations. This session will foreground the concept’s status as a positive generative force and a mode of transcendence as we consider the hybrid’ varied deployment throughout history, describing: physical creatures such as the satyr and the centaur; the intersection of racial, gender, and cultural identities, and recent innovations in classroom and energy technologies. Possible approaches include:
· Hybridity and mythology
· Hybridity and the imagination
· Hybridity as a means of conceptualizing border crossing and cultural/racial intersection
· Hybridity and the history of science
· Hybridity and gender identity
· Hybridity and language
· Hybridity and generic intersection
· Hybridity as artificial construct
· Hybridity contemporary theoretical discourses
· Hybridity and interdisciplinarity
· Hybridity and material culture
· Hybridity in educational technology
· Hybridity and innovations in energy/environmental technology
· Hybridity and travel narrative.
· Hybridity and environmental criticism
· Hybridity and disability studies
· Hybridity and the Anthopocene
· Hybridity and the posthuman
Please submit a 250 word abstract and 100 word bio to Claire Sommers (claire.sommers@wustl.edu) by March 1, 2024.
Claire Sommers