The City in Literature and Culture (Special Session) at PAMLA (Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association) Conference 2026—Seattle (PAMLA (Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association) Conference 2026)
Seattle, WA
Organization: PAMLA (Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association) Conference
Event: PAMLA (Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association) Conference 2026
The City in Literature and Culture (Special Session) at PAMLA (Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association) Conference 2026—Seattle
The City in Literature and Culture (special session) of the Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association (PAMLA) is now accepting proposals for the organization’s 123rd annual conference. The call-for-papers deadline is Friday, May 15, 2026. This is an entirely in-person conference with no virtual/hybrid panels or sessions.
This special session of The City in Literature and Culture welcomes proposals focused on the varied ways of constructing a city’s identity as broadly conceived, especially beyond North America. Since this year’s conference theme is “Our Ruling Classes: Culture, Power, Conflict,” we are interested in papers/presentations that consider the ways in which literary and/or cultural texts address the city as an arena for generating, reflecting, and/or facilitating the construction of characters who slip between the interstices of city spaces and crisscross borders of identity, both real and imagined. Since the conference is being held in Seattle, WA this year, proposals focused on the diverse spaces of this dynamic city are certainly welcome. However, other proposals will also be considered outside of the conference theme.
How does the city perpetuate the spectacles of power and alternate perceptions through the design of Disneyfied, simulacral, panoptic, or utopic/dystopic constructions? What are the possibilities for reordering systems of power or unveiling and unraveling hierarchies through narrative (and counter-narrative) productions of city space? In what ways can the city subvert or activate (or simultaneously be subverted or activated by) the im/migrant, refugee, flâneur/flâneuse, dérive, pilgrim, tourist (etc.) as a means for unveiling overt/covert power imbalances? Consider why the spectrum of urban sites— streets and freeways, markets and malls, plazas and parks, gardens and graveyards, mirrors and museums, brothels and cinemas, and other sacred/secular or public/private spaces throughout a city—can (potentiality) produce opportunities and moments for the personal and collective to intersect, for binary constructions and opposites to dissolve, and for physical and psychological borders and barriers to be transgressed.
Possible topics and focuses to consider include, but are not limited to, combinations of the following:
- the city street as social, artistic, and/or performative stage for the urban dance (Jacobs)
- odysseys through third-spaces in a city’s texture (Soja, Lefebvre)
- the function of proxemics to articulate encounters and exchanges (Hall)
- labyrinths/undergrounds as conduits for traversing through city spaces (Borges, Calvino, Eco)
- the city’s role as heterotopic or comprised of constellations of heterotopias (Foucault, Hetherington)
- reified spectacles and socio-spatial reorderings (Debord)
- city narratives examined through translocal, transcultural, or transnational lenses (Mattheis, Appadurai)
- re/productions of “reality,” simulacra, authenticity, and/or aura in relation to city design and experience (Baudrillard, Benjamin)
- the city as a palimpsestic system of histories, memories, and layering (Dillon, Huyssen)
- characters, including the city itself, who disrupt spatio-temporal constructions
- comparative readings of cities that challenge conventional discourses
- city as site of contestation and border crisscrossing: exile, im/migration, othering, intersectionality, diaspora, etc.
- the overlapping of Eastern and Western (Global North and South) epistemologies and ontologies in the city
- employing genres of reading the city that produce a fluid kaleidoscope of cultural identities via literature, film, public art/murals, architecture, etc.
The PAMLA Annual Conference 2026 will be held at the Hyatt Regency Seattle in Seattle, WA, from Thursday, November 12 to Sunday, November 15.
Website: https://www.pamla.org/pamla2026-seattle/
How to Submit:
In order to join the Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association (PAMLA) for the 2026 year, you will need to go to PAMLA Ballast Academic Portal: https://pamla.ballastacademic.com/
At the PAMLA Ballast Academic portal, you’ll first need to create a new User Account (unless you already set one up). Once you’ve created a new user account, click on the Registration & Membership link, and then you will be able to pay for your 2026 PAMLA membership, pay the 2026 PAMLA Conference fee, make a donation to the PAMLA Scholarship Fund, pay to join us for a luncheon, and make reservations for some of our complimentary PAMLA events.
Everyone presenting at the 2026 PAMLA Conference is required to join PAMLA and pay the conference fee. For more information about PAMLA’s membership dues and conference fees, go to our dues chart. The call-for-papers deadline is Friday, May 15, 2026.
Please know that PAMLA accepts individual papers rather than organized panels. You can submit up to three proposals to three different sessions, although each proposal must be distinct, and you can ultimately present only one paper at the conference. PAMLA is a congenial and welcoming forum that presents excellent opportunities for meeting with scholars formally and informally from in and outside of your respective fields of study.
Contact Info:
Dr. Michael Moreno, Professor of English, Green River College
Contact Email:
mmoreno@greenriver.edu
https://www.pamla.org/pamla2025/
Dr. Michael Moreno