Romanticism and Related Panels at MLA ‘25
If you’re headed to New Orleans January 9 to 12 for the annual MLA conference, we’ve done a round-up of panels that might be interesting to our readership. The full calendar is here. Please let us know if we’ve missed anything that you’d like to be included!
And don’t forget to book tickets for the K-SAA Awards Dinner on January 11.
This list is compiled by the K-SAA Communications Fellows and Communications Director.
The K-SAA sponsored panel is:
270 - Invisible Genres of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries,
Friday January 10, 12:00-1:15
Hilton Riverside New Orleans - Chart A (Riverside Complex)
Description
This roundtable aims to consider how invisible, incipient or overlooked genres take form and expression in the work of John Keats, Mary and Percy Shelley, and their contemporaries. What are the conditions under which a genre becomes visible? How does genre function as a tool of evaluation? If generic categories tend to be characterized by similarities in form, style and subject, what implicit hierarchies govern the thresholds for distinguishing or studying a genre?
Presider
Amelia Worsley (Amherst College)
Participants
Alexis Chema (University of Chicago)
David Faflik (University of Rhode Island)
Spencer Dodd (Louisiana State University)
Judith Pascoe (Florida State University)
Jacob Risinger (The Ohio State University)
Jonathan Sachs (Concordia University, Montreal)
Fuson Wang (University of California Riverside)
Romanticism panels
Thursday January 9
29 - Comparative Global Nineteenth-Century Studies: Questions, Theories, Methodologies
12-1:15PM
Hilton Riverside New Orleans - Salon 16 (1st Floor)
Description
Panelists engage in a metaconversation about the conundrums posed by the global turn in nineteenth-century research. How do we think across regions that are usually studied separately? How is global studies different from empire studies or the transimperial? How do the elements of otherness cemented in the nineteenth century—race, class, gender, nation, and religion, among others—enter into our understanding of the global and its comparatisms?
Presider
Jessica Valdez (Louisiana State U, Baton Rouge)
Speakers
Zarena Aslami (Michigan State U)
Sukanya Banerjee (U of California, Berkeley)
Amy E. Martin (Mount Holyoke C)
Jessie Reeder (Binghamton U, State U of New York)
Rachel Teukolsky (Vanderbilt U)
Alisha Walters (Penn State U, Abington)
Olivia Lingyi Xu (Northwestern U)
80 - Victorian Invisibilities
3:30-4:45PM
Hilton Riverside New Orleans - Chart C (Riverside Complex)
Presider
Renee Fox (U of California, Santa Cruz)
Presentations
“Black Playwrights on the Victorian Stage, “ Sharon Weltman (Texas Christian U)
“Victoria’s Invisible Race: The Cagots, Whiteness, and Racialization,” Daniel Akiva Novak (U of Alabama, Tuscaloosa)
“Invisible Hand, Invisible Threat: Marx’s Critique of Capital and Victorian Irish Radicalism,” Amy E. Martin (Mt. Holyoke C)
160 - Narrative Theory, Historically Speaking
7:00-8:15PM
Hilton Riverside New Orleans - Fulton (3rd Floor)
Description
What has it meant for Victorianists and modernists to engage with narrative theory? What does it mean for how they might engage with it now? To what extent is the idea of a historical narratology useful? In addressing these questions, panelists take up a range of topics, including theories of the novel, the relation of literature and science, and the relation of narrative theory and poetics.
Presider
Sukanya Banerjee (U of California, Berkeley)
Speakers
Elaine Auyoung (U of Minnesota, Twin Cities)
Tina Young Choi (York U)
Cornelia Pearsall (Smith C)
Kent Puckett (U of California, Berkeley)
Daniel Stout (U of Mississippi, Oxford)
Robyn Warhol (Ohio State U, Columbus)
Alex Woloch (Stanford U)
Friday January 10
224 - The Future of Nineteenth-Century Author-Based Societies I
8:30-9:45AM
Hilton Riverside New Orleans - Commerce (3rd Floor)
Description
What challenges, best practices, and projects can help create broad communities of readers for nineteenth-century authors within the academy and the wider public? Members and leaders of author societies consider which new infrastructures and collaborations can best support scholarship, fundraising, public humanities, DEI, and future lives of small humanities organizations.
For related material, visit mla.hcommons.org/groups/19th-century-british-and-us-author-societies/ after 1 Jan.
Presider
Kate Singer (Mount Holyoke C)
Speakers
Stephanie P. Browner (New School)
Mary A. Carney (U of Georgia)
Dawn D. Coleman (U of Tennessee, Knoxville)
Melissa Gniadek (U of Toronto)
Sean Grass (Rochester Inst. of Tech.)
John Gruesser (Sam Houston State U)
Keri Holt (Utah State U)
Charles W. Mahoney (U of Connecticut, Storrs)
James McKusick (U of Missouri, Kansas City)
Kaila Rose (Byron Soc. of America)
229 - Blake in the Twenty-First Century
10:15-11:30AM
Hilton Riverside New Orleans - Steering (Riverside Complex)
Presider
Kathryn Sue Freeman (U of Miami)
Presentations
“Disorientation and Dysphoria: Blake’s Infernal Falls,” Smith Yarberry (Northwestern U)
“Blake’s Lambeth Books and the Trauma of the Sciences,” Tilottama Rajan (U of Western Ontario)
“Biodiverse Blake: Ecologies of Being from Songs of Innocence to Milton,” Kurt Fosso (Lewis and Clark C)
“Silence and Secrecy in Blake’s Europe,” Jennifer Davis Michael (U of the South)
309 - Transnational Byron
1:45-3:00PM
Hilton Riverside New Orleans - Chart A (Riverside Complex)
Presider
Piya Pal-Lapinski (Bowling Green State U)
Presentations
"Byron’s ‘Infant World’,” Mark E. Canuel (U of Illinois, Chicago)
"Byron’s Global Celebrity,” Omar F. Miranda (U of San Francisco)
“Don Juan’s Migrant Children,” Jonathan Sachs (Concordia U, Montreal)
"Byron as Translator,” Maria Schoina (Aristoteleio Panepistemio Thessalonikes)
391 - Dickensian Cultures and Communities
5:15-6:30PM
Hilton Riverside New Orleans - Chart C (Riverside Complex)
For related material, visit dickensianculturesandcommunities.hcommons.org/
Presider
Chris Louttit (Radboud U)
Presentations
"How Did Slums Become Dickensian?” Jason Finch (Åbo Akademi U)
“Scrooge Goes to Seoul,” Richard Bonfiglio (Sogang U)
"Dickens’s Christmas in the Twenty-First Century,” Jen Cadwallader (Randolph-Macon C)
“Dickensian Silliness: Serialization, Pastiche, and Parody in the Twenty-First-Century Sister Arts,” Elizabeth Bridgham (Providence C)
Saturday January 11
437 - Romanticism, the Shelley Circle, and the Spirit of the Age
8:30-9:45AM
Hilton Riverside New Orleans - Chart C (Riverside Complex)
Presider
Brian Rejack (Illinois State U)
Presentations
“Wollstonecraft’s Spirit: A Contemporary Portrait,” Sonia Hofkosh (Tufts U)
“‘Mirrors of the Gigantic Shadows’: Spirited Away with the Shelleys,” Jennifer M. B. Wallace (U of Cambridge, Peterhouse C)
"Things as They Are; or, The Spirits of the Age,” Margaret E. Russett (U of Southern California)
"The ‘Legislator’ and the ‘Spirit of the Age’ in Shelley’s Defence of Poetry,” Pablo San Martín Varela (U of Chile)
511 - The Future of Nineteenth-Century Author-Based Societies II
10:15-11:30AM
Hilton Riverside New Orleans - Commerce (3rd Floor)
Description
What challenges, best practices, and projects can help create broad communities of readers for nineteenth-century authors within the academy and the wider public? Members and leaders of author societies consider which new infrastructures and collaborations can best support scholarship, fundraising, public humanities, DEI, and future lives of small humanities organizations.
For related material, visit mla.hcommons.org/groups/19th-century-british-and-us-author-societies/ after 1 Jan.
Presider
Kate Singer (Mount Holyoke C)
Speakers
Stephanie P. Browner (New School)
Mary A. Carney (U of Georgia)
Dawn D. Coleman (U of Tennessee, Knoxville)
Melissa Gniadek (U of Toronto)
Sean Grass (Rochester Inst. of Tech.)
John Gruesser (Sam Houston State U)
Keri Holt (Utah State U)
Charles W. Mahoney (U of Connecticut, Storrs)
James McKusick (U of Missouri, Kansas City)
Kaila Rose (Byron Soc. of America)
516 - Romanticism, Hazlitt, and the Spirit of the Age
12-1:15PM
Hilton Riverside New Orleans - Chart B (Riverside Complex)
Presider
Ian Balfour (York U)
Presentations
"The Spirits of the Law: The Trials of Hazlitt’s ‘Contemporary Portraits’,” Mark Schoenfield, (Vanderbilt U)"
"Hue and Cry: Hazlitt’s Chromophobia and the Color of Romanticism,” Betsy Winakur Tontiplaphol (Trinity U)
“The Spirit of the Postcolonial Age: Hazlitt, the Popular Arts, and West Indian Independence,” Nasser Mufti (U of Illinois, Chicago)
601 - John Clare and Change
3:30-4:45PM
Hilton Riverside New Orleans - Quarterdeck C (Riverside Complex)
Presider
Erica McAlpine (U of Oxford, St Edmund Hall)
Presentations
"Unreturning Seasons: The Lyric Present after Habitat Loss," Cassandra Falke (UiT Norges arktiske U)
“Settled Science and ‘Unsettled Homes’: On John Clare’s Swallows,” Olivia Rosane (independent scholar)
“John Clare and the Fens,” Francesca Mackenney (Library of Congress)
“How Should We Edit John Clare? Copyright, the Politics of Language, and Textual Criticism,” Simon Kovesi (U of Glasgow)
623 - Let’s Collab!
3:30-4:45PM
Hilton Riverside New Orleans - Quarterdeck A (Riverside Complex)
Presiders
Sarah Tindal Kareem (U of California, Los Angeles)
Amit Yahav (U of Minnesota, Twin Cities)
Presentations
“Collaborative Authorship and Abolition: Belinda Sutton’s Petition,” David Diamond (U of Georgia) and James Reeves (Texas State U)
"Clubbing Together: Swift, Pope, and Collaborative Authorship,” Judith Hawley (Royal Holloway, U of London)
“Collaborative Fiction(s) and Common Property,” S. Cailey Hall (U of California, Los Angeles)
652 - Desire without Objects
5:15-6:30PM
Hilton Riverside New Orleans - Salon 22 (1st Floor)
Decription
Panelists explore Romanticism’s fragmented, disorienting objects and the contrary desires, aversions, and inversions they provoke in contexts ranging from Wordsworth and Hemans to the Ottoman poet Abdülhaman Hamid Tarhan, Freud, and Benjamin.
Presider
Yoon Sun Lee (Wellesley C
Speakers
Nina Farizova (Kalamazoo C)
Renee Fox (U of California, Santa Cruz)
Burcu Gursel (Kirklareli U)
James Metcalf (U of Manchester)
John Park (New C of Florida)
Sonia Hofkosh (Tufts U)
Sunday January 12
708 - The Future of Nineteenth-Century Author-Based Societies III
8:30-9:45AM
Hilton Riverside New Orleans - Commerce (3rd Floor)
Decription
What challenges, best practices, and projects can help create broad communities of readers for nineteenth-century authors within the academy and the wider public? Members and leaders of author societies consider which new infrastructures and collaborations can best support scholarship, fundraising, public humanities, DEI, and future lives of small humanities organizations.
For related material, visit mla.hcommons.org/groups/19th-century-british-and-us-author-societies/ after 1 Jan.
Presider
Kate Singer (Mount Holyoke C)
Speakers
Stephanie P. Browner (New School)
Mary A. Carney (U of Georgia)
Dawn D. Coleman (U of Tennessee, Knoxville)
Melissa Gniadek (U of Toronto)
Sean Grass (Rochester Inst. of Tech.)
John Gruesser (Sam Houston State U)
Keri Holt (Utah State U)
Charles W. Mahoney (U of Connecticut, Storrs)
James McKusick (U of Missouri, Kansas City)
Kaila Rose (Byron Soc. of America)
711 - “The Limits of the Dead and Living World”: A Conversation on Shelley’s “Mont Blanc”
10:15-11:30AM
Hilton Riverside New Orleans - Salon 22 (1st Floor)
For related material, write to kgoodman@berkeley.edu after 31 Dec.
Presider
Kevis Goodman (U of California, Berkeley)
Respondent
Noah Heringman (U of Missouri, Columbia)
Presentations
“Shelley’s Timefulness,” Margaret Ronda (U of California, Davis)
“‘Mont Blanc’: Shelley’s Anthropology of Most of Humanity,” Edgar Garcia (U of Chicago)
755 - Reseeing Jane Austen at 250
12-1:15PM
Hilton Riverside New Orleans - Salon 4 (1st Floor)
Description
Jane Austen’s sestercentennial will be celebrated in 2025. Panelists set out to make visible (and ask pressing questions about) its global impact and meanings, emphasizing Austen and the public humanities, current work in multimodal formats, and how best to engage with diverse audiences about Austen’s era, its history, and her iconicity in this landmark year.
Presider
Devoney Looser (Arizona State U, Tempe)
Speakers
Stephanie Hershinow (Baruch C, City U of New York)
Devoney Looser (Arizona State U, Tempe)
Patricia A. Matthew (Montclair State U)
769 - Commonplacing and Commonplace Books: From Book History to Present-Day Pedagogy
1:45-3:00PM
Hilton Riverside New Orleans - Camp (3rd Floor)
Description
Speakers explore eighteenth- and nineteenth-century practices of commonplacing in British literature and in the classroom today, building on the work of nineteenth-century literary scholars on commonplace book traditions and on contemporary pedagogy theories of “commons” spaces.
For related material, visit drive.google.com/drive/folders/1ewgHm5w_erRODcd1kbk6lL6t-FwAcsY0?usp=sharing
Presider
Christopher Rovee (Louisiana State U, Baton Rouge)
Speakers
Jessica Gray (U of California, Davis)
Jillian Hess (Bronx Community C, City U of New York)
Olivia Loksing Moy (Lehman C, City U of New York)
Alina Romo (Allan Hancock C, CA)
Kacie Wills (Allan Hancock C, CA)
Jessica Yood (Lehman C, City U of New York)