We solicit proposals for special sessions for the 2018 PAMLA Conference at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington, over the November 9-11 weekend. The theme for the 116th Annual Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association (PAMLA) Conference will be “Acting, Roles, Stages.” Special session proposals are welcome on any areas or topics not covered by one of our general (standing) sessions; but we would especially welcome proposals on topics related to this theme, ranging from issues such as acting as art and metaphor, theories of role play and theatricality, and conceptions of the world stage and the public audience.

Possible topics may include, but are not limited to: styles of acting across time and media; naturalist or anti-realist techniques of performance and stagecraft; the staging of everyday life; social roles and role play (e.g., Goffman’s “presentation of self in everyday life”); and performativity and technologies of mediation.

You may also propose topics for special sessions that do not address our special conference theme. However, if you do so, be sure that your special topic does not replicate a general (standing) session area (see below for the list of general sessions).

Should your proposed special session be approved, you will need to join PAMLA right away for the 2018 year, and you will be expected to work with PAMLA Executive Director Craig Svonkin to make sure that your session is a success. You will also be expected to attend the conference and act as chair of your own session.

To propose a special session, please send PAMLA 1^st VP Professor Stanley Orr (University of Hawai’i, West O’ahu) the following information as a Word document attachment by January 25, 2018:

• Your name as you wish it to appear
• Your affiliation
• Your email
• Proposed Session Title
• A Brief Abstract of approximately 50 words intended for possible proposers
• A longer Proposal of 100 to 200 words describing for Dr. Orr the nature and significance of your proposed special session

Send this information to Dr. Orr at [email protected] by January 25, 2018. Professor Orr will be in touch with all proposers by the beginning of February.

The following General Sessions present programs at the Association’s annual conference: Adaptation Studies; African American Literature; American Literature before 1865; American Literature 1865-1945; American Literature after 1945; Ancient-Modern Relations; Architecture, Space, and Literature; Asian American Literature; Asian Literature; Austrian Studies; Autobiography; British Literature and Culture: To 1700; British Literature and Culture: The Long Eighteenth Century; British Literature and Culture: The Long Nineteenth Century; British Literature and Culture: 20th and 21st Century; Children’s Literature; Classics (Greek); Classics (Latin); Comics and Graphic Narratives; Comparative American Ethnic Literature; Comparative Literature; Comparative Media; Composition and Rhetoric; Creative Writing; Critical Theory; Disney and Its Worlds; East-West Literary Relations; Film and Literature; Film Studies; Folklore and Mythology; Food Studies; French; Gay, Lesbian and Transgender Literature; Germanic Studies; Gothic; Indigenous Literatures and Cultures; Italian; Italian Cinema; Italian Ecocriticism; Jewish Literature and Culture; Latina/o Literature and Culture; Linguistics; Literature & the Other Arts; Literature and Religion; Medieval Literature; Middle English Literature, including Chaucer; New Italians; Oceanic Literatures and Cultures; Old English Literature, including Beowulf; Poetry and Poetics; Post-Colonial Literature; Rhetorical Approaches to Literature; Romanticism; Scandinavian Literature and Culture; Science Fiction; Shakespeare and Related Topics; Spain, Portugal, and Latin America: Jewish Culture & Literature in Trans-Iberia, Spanish and Portuguese (Latin American); Spanish and Portuguese (Peninsular); Teaching with Media and Technology; Television Studies; Travel and Literature; Western American Literature; Women in Literature.