Whether you are a seasoned scholar, a creative writer, or a first-time presenter, working on the following four scholarly/rhetorical “to dos” is the best way to ensure presiding officers understand the thoughtfulness, rigor, nuance, and relevance of your paper proposal.
In our experience at PAMLA, we’ve noticed that strong paper proposals tend to do four things, whether explicitly or not: they (1) Establish a Big Idea or Topic Area, sometimes by establishing the critical conversation you are joining or by setting up a clear interpretive question; (2) Articulate a Thesis, perhaps a tentative one, concerning that stated or implied interpretive question; (3) Specify a Method or Approach; and (4) Anchor themselves in Case Studies or Clear Examples/Textual Evidence for examination.
When these elements are missing, a proposal (no matter how promising the underlying project) can appear thin or unfinished. By “showing and telling” more about your project, you provide the presiding officer with the concrete proof they need to invite you to the session.
To ensure your paper proposal is robust and complete, focus on these four argumentative practices:
The Big Idea (Context)
Effective paper proposals begin by situating themselves within a broader critical, theoretical, or aesthetic conversation. This opening gesture does more than provide background or context; it marks your position within the field.
- The Goal: Make the conceptual terrain in which your paper is situated clear. Briefly indicate what discussion you are joining and why that discussion is of interest or significant.
- Engage with the Conversation: Setting up your topic often involves indicating your alignment with or departure from an established thinker or discourse.
- Define your Interpretive Questions: It often helps to clarify the specific interpretive question(s) that you intend to attempt to answer.
The Thesis (Argument)
If the opening of your paper proposal establishes the broader intellectual stakes, connects your work to earlier scholarship, and perhaps asks a clear interpretive question or two, your thesis, even if tentative, specifies the way the Big Idea is formed and deployed. Your thesis (even if still tentative) should be a clear, contestable claim that does more than announce a topic.
If the “Big Idea” establishes the stakes, your thesis specifies your contribution. A strong paper proposal asserts what the paper demonstrates, rethinks, or makes newly visible.
- The Goal: Offer a clear, contestable claim that does more than announce a topic. While the thesis need not be fully elaborated at this stage, it should be as precise as possible.
- Topic vs. Thesis: A topic is what your paper is about (e.g., “Food Imagery in Sylvia Plath”). A thesis is the argument you are making (e.g., “Sylvia Plath utilizes domestic food imagery to deconstruct the mid-century’s ‘feminine mystique’ by reading and subverting gendered food preparation and consumption via a gothic lens of uncanny consumption and decay”).
- Topic vs. Thesis Example #2: A topic is what your paper is about (e.g., “The role of the sea in Moby-Dick”). A thesis is a claim that requires proof (e.g., “Melville depicts the sea as a shifting site of industrial labor that complicates 19th-century notions of the sublime, depicting Ishmael and Queequeg’s voyage on the sea as sublime and monstrous, transcendent and capitalist/materialist both).
- Thesis Precision: While your thesis need not be fully elaborated quite yet, it should be as precise as possible to indicate the paper’s contribution to ongoing scholarly conversations that the proposer should demonstrate some understanding of at the outset.
- Clarity and Nuance: We tend to value at PAMLA a thesis that is clear, nuanced, complex, and that offers qualifications or complications.
Method or Approach (The “How”)
Once you’ve stated what you are arguing, briefly explain how you are arriving at that conclusion. This identifies the “lens” you are using to look at your subject.
- The Goal: Specify your methodology. Are you using a specific theoretical framework (e.g., New Historicism, Queer Theory, Ecocriticism)? Some combination of theoretical methods? Are you performing a formalist close reading or a comparative study? Knowing your “how” gives the presiding officer confidence in your scholarly process.
Evidence and Case Studies (The “What”)
A strong proposal must move from the abstract to the concrete. You need to anchor your argument in specific examples, texts, or case studies.
- The Goal: Specify the primary texts, films, or historical artifacts you will examine or use as evidence. If you are proposing a creative piece, describe the specific sequence or formal experiment you will share. The more you “show your work” by referencing specific evidence, the stronger your proposal becomes.
- Textual Evidence: Your textual examples should be legibly integrated into the logic of your argument; they should not be treated as an exhaustive list: the more focus the better.
- Close Reading/Example: It is helpful, even if you haven’t written your full essay, to provide your reader with at least one specific example paragraph with textual analysis in support of your thesis. So, for example, if you are offering a new reading of a Shakespeare play, don’t just tell us that you are offering a post-human interpretation of Caliban, or Prospero, or Ariel. Help your presiding officer to understand your argument by offering at least one sample body paragraph with specific textual analysis. That will enable the presiding officer to understand the way that your essay will proceed.
- A Reminder on Formatting: Please ensure your proposal follows standard MLA-style conventions. This includes using italics for the titles of books, plays, films, and other long-form works (e.g., The Great Gatsby or Beloved). This attention to detail shows the presiding officer that your final paper will be polished and scholarly.
Summary Checklist for a Strong Proposal:
- The Big Idea: Have you identified the critical conversation or interpretive question?
- The Thesis: Is there a clear, contestable claim that goes beyond just a topic?
- The Method: Have you indicated the approach or theoretical lens you are using?
- The Evidence: Have you specified the case studies or examples you’ll be examining?
- The Formatting: Have you used MLA-style italics for book and film titles?
A Few Other Hints:
- Prioritize Clarity and Communication: Avoid the temptation to submit jargon-filled, opaque, or overly dense proposals. While we are an academic organization, we value clarity of expression. Write for a reader other than yourself; if a colleague in a slightly different field can’t follow your trajectory, your presiding officer might struggle as well.
- Explanation is as Important as Statement: It is one thing to state a fascinating thesis, but it is quite another to explain how you intend to prove it. A strong proposal doesn’t just “drop” an idea; it guides the reader through the logic behind that idea.
- Length Matters: While your final conference abstract must be brief, your proposal can be significantly longer. Use that extra space to provide the depth and nuance that a short abstract simply cannot hold.
- Draft Externally to Protect Your Work: We strongly recommend that you do not type your proposal directly into our submission system. Instead, write and revise your proposal in a program like Word or Google Docs first. This prevents you from losing your work due to a technical glitch or timeout. When you are ready, paste as plain text (Ctrl+Shift+V) into the CFP submission page.
- Note: You may need to clear your formatting when pasting to ensure extra “hidden” code doesn’t interfere with your word count. Or, paste as plain text (Ctrl+Shift+V).
- Quality Over Quantity: Please resist the urge to submit the same proposal to multiple sessions. We encourage you to craft a unique proposal for each session you choose, and we recommend proposing no more than three or four papers in total (PAMLA rules only allow someone to present one paper at the conference in a traditional paper panel; attendees may also present a second time in a roundtable or creative session). It is always better to submit one or two highly tailored, robust proposals than several underdeveloped ones.
- Know Your Session’s Focus: Before you hit submit, read the specific session’s information one last time. Ensure your proposal truly fits that session’s design and scholarly goals. A brilliant paper in the wrong session is often a missed opportunity for both you and the presiding officer.
- Take Pride in the Proposal Itself: Treat your paper proposal as a piece of writing worth your time and the time of the presiding officer. Read it out loud, proofread it, and revise it. Even though this is “just” a proposal and not the final essay, your potential presiding officer and future audience deserve a carefully considered and polished piece of writing.
Thank you for proposing a paper for PAMLA 2026: https://pamla.ballastacademic.com/Home/CFP .
If you have any questions, feel free to contact PAMLA’s Executive Director, Craig Svonkin: director@pamla.org or 626-354-7526.
Best, David John Boyd, PAMLA Communications Director, and Craig Svonkin, PAMLA Executive Director