CFPs for 2026 from the MLA Committee on Disability Issues in the Profession
6 months, 2 weeks ago-
MLA Committee on Disability Issues in the Profession: Calls for Papers
Impairment Theory
Papers exploring personal and/or phenomenological accounts of impairment—not as physical conditions of illness or disability but as embodied experiences that generate cultural, social, and political insights for scholarship. Submit a 250-word abstract by the deadline.
Deadline for submissions: Saturday, 15 March 2025
Junting Huang, Harvard U (huangjt09@gmail.com )
Disability, Belonging, and Family
This virtual panel seeks abstracts that address how disability and the concept of family encompass different experiences across relationships, communities, and texts. 250-word abstracts on topics related to this theme. Short bio.
Deadline for submissions: Saturday, 15 March 2025
Lauren Rocha, Merrimack College (lrwriter89@gmail.com )
Defamiliarizing Normalcy: Disability Narratives on Film, Television and Other Screens
Seeking papers about disability and/in visual media, any theoretical perspective: disabled characters, differently abled artists, disabled actors, disabled gaze, disability gain onscreen, disabled audiences/spectators, disability genres. 250-word abstract, short bio.
Deadline for submissions: Thursday, 20 March 2025
Eduardo Ledesma, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (eledes1@illinois.edu )
Impairment Theory
This session invites proposals that explore personal and phenomenological accounts of impairment—not merely as a physical condition of illness or disability but as an embodied experience that generates cultural, social, and political insights.
While disability studies have long critiqued the social structures that create disabling environments, disabled scholars also seek to foreground impairment itself as a site of knowledge production—whether through Tobin Siebers’s theory of complex embodiment or Jonathan Sterne’s call for a political phenomenology of impairment. Challenging traditional deficit-based understandings of disability as mere loss, new frameworks highlight the cognitive, cultural, and communicative benefits of these conditions. Deaf gain, for instance, emphasizes how sign languages enhance visual-spatial cognition and contribute to linguistic and artistic diversity. Similarly, blind gain considers how blindness fosters alternative sensory experiences and modes of perception that reshape knowledge production and dissemination.
This session invites proposals that consider: How do lived experiences of impairment shape knowledge production? How can impairment be theorized beyond the limitations of the social model? We welcome interdisciplinary approaches and encourage submissions engaging with disability phenomenology, auto-theory, and critical perspectives on impairment in relation to academia, writing, art, technology, and media.
Possible topics include but are not limited to:
- Impairment as a generative epistemological framework
- Personal narrative in theorizing impairment
- Impairment and its relation to writing, research, and pedagogy
- Alternative modes of communication in academic and creative fields
- Theorizations of deafness, blindness, limited mobility, or other physical/sensory differences
- Theorizations of fatigue, sensory impairment, and neurodivergence
- Intersections of impairment with chronic illness and pain studies
- Impairment and its relation to disability justice and activism
The CDI acknowledges that disabled scholars remain significantly underrepresented in higher education and is dedicated to showcasing how their lived experiences contribute to knowledge production as well as intellectual and cultural diversity on campus and beyond. This session aims to highlight how disabled scholars and scholars engaging with impairment integrate their lived experiences and critical perspectives into their scholarship.
Please submit a 250-word abstract by March 15, 2025, to Junting Huang at huangjt09@gmail.com. This session will take place in person at MLA 2026 in Toronto (January 8–11).
Disability, Belonging, and Family
This session seeks abstracts that address how disability and the concept of family encompass different experiences across relationships, communities, and texts. These proposals can either draw from lived experiences or address portrayals of disability in families in literature, TV shows, film, and other content. Personal and/or theoretical lenses are welcome. Potential topics include:
- The problematic use of “normal” in relationships (i.e. to refer to a person without disabilities).
- Accessibility issues and feelings surrounding social functions (family reunions, holidays, vacations)
- Portrayals of families with at least one member with disabilities in literature and media such as TLC’s Baylen Out Loud and Netflix’s Love on the Spectrum
- Parenting and disability
- Agency, independence, and disability (living on one’s own, moving away from family, achieving milestones such as marriage)
- Dinner Table Syndrome and exclusion from everyday conversations and interactions
- Isolation and/or connection to family members without disabilities
- Kinship and interpersonal relationships
- Family as a metaphor
This session will be held virtually during the 2026 MLA Convention. If interested, please submit a 250-word abstract and short bio to Lauren Rocha at lrwriter89@gmail.com (LRWRITER89@GMAIL.COM) by March 15, 2025.
Lauren Rocha
Associate Professor of Practice, Humanities
Merrimack College
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