Midwest Modern Language Association Antiracism Permanent Section (Midwest Modern Language Association Convention)
Chicago
Organization: Midwest Modern Language Association
Event: Midwest Modern Language Association Convention
Archives are not neutral: they tell stories about who counts, whose experiences are remembered, and whose are erased. For centuries, racial hierarchies have shaped the preservation of knowledge, leaving silences where Black, Indigenous, and other marginalized voices should be. The Antiracism Permanent Section of the MMLA invites submissions that move beyond critique, asking how we can?reimagine, rebuild, and transform the archive?to reflect justice, equity, and shared humanity.
We are especially interested in work that explores:
- Inventive counter-archives:?Projects that center marginalized communities, oral histories, ephemeral media, or other forms of knowledge often excluded from dominant records.
- Reparative practices:?Scholarly, artistic, and pedagogical strategies that confront historical erasure and cultivate ethical, inclusive forms of memory.
- Racialized memory and cultural futures:?How literature, film, digital media, and creative practice can reshape collective memory to acknowledge harm and foster accountability.
- Decolonial and diasporic frameworks:? Approaches that rethink authority, belonging, and custodianship of knowledge across languages, geographies, and traditions.
- Intersections with technology, climate, and crisis:?How digital archives, AI, environmental disruption, and social transformation influence whose stories endure and how antiracist interventions can ensure equity.
This section seeks proposals that not only analyze inequities in archives but?actively propose or model alternatives: new forms of documentation, preservation, storytelling, and cultural memory that resist erasure and center justice. Presentations may include research papers, creative projects, teaching innovations, or community-engaged initiatives that envision archives as sites of empowerment, repair, and possibility.
Submission Guidelines: Proposals should be?250–300 words. Include the author’s name and institutional affiliation (if any). Submit proposals to cburrow6@asu.edu by? April 24, 2026.
https://www.midwest-mla.org/permanent-sections#faq-298586Collapse
Cedric Burrows