MLA 2024: Twenty-First-Century Forms

For this year’s Modern Language Association Convention, to be held January 4–7, 2024 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, I organized and will be moderating a roundtable on Twenty-First-Century Forms, featuring the following speakers: Andrew Ferguson, Aislinn McDougall, Élika Ortega, Kimberly Southwick-Thompson, Kaushik Tekur, Anna Torres Cacoullos, and Zach Wagner. I have included the information about the panel and, below that, full abstracts from each speaker.

119. Twenty-First-Century Forms

Thursday, January 4, 2024, 5:15–6:30 p.m. (EST)

If one might argue that the novel and lyric poem have become residual forms, what literary forms are emerging in contemporaneity? Panelists explore emergent literary forms of the twenty-first century and their relationship with, instantiation in, or remediation by other (digital) media: Internet writing, social media, print-digital books, film, television, and other hybrid and multimodal narrative and poetic forms.

Speakers
Andrew Ferguson (U of Virginia)
Aislinn McDougall (U of Regina)
Élika Ortega (U of Colorado, Boulder)
Kimberly Southwick-Thompson (Jacksonville State U)
Kaushik Tekur (Binghamton U, State U of New York)
Anna Torres Cacoullos (U of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign)
Zach Wagner (Binghamton U, State U of New York)

Presiding
Bradley J. Fest (Hartwick C)

Continue reading

MLA 2023: Twenty-First-Century Forms

For this year’s Modern Language Association Convention, to be held January 5–8, 2023 in San Francisco, California, I organized and will be speaking on a roundtable on Twenty-First-Century Forms, along with Daniel Burns, Zoe Bursztajn-Illingworth, Kathryn Harlan-Gran, Kevin Pyon, and Elizabeth Sotelo. I have included the information about the panel and, below that, full abstracts from each speaker.

197. Twenty-First-Century Forms

Friday, January 6, 2023, 8:30–9:45 a.m. (PST)

If one might argue that the novel and lyric poem have become residual forms, what literary forms are emerging in contemporaneity? Panelists explore emergent literary forms of the twenty-first century and their relationship with, instantiation in, or remediation by other (digital) media: film, documentary, social media, publishing platforms, transmedia, autotheory, and other hybrid narrative and poetic forms.

Speakers
Dan Burns (Elon University)
Bradley J. Fest (Hartwick College)
Zoe Bursztajn-Illingworth (The University of Texas at Austin)
Kathryn Harlan-Gran (Cornell University)
Kevin Pyon (Pennsylvania State University, Harrisburg)
Elizabeth Sotelo (University of Oregon)

Presiding
Bradley Fest (Hartwick College)

Continue reading

“Twenty-First-Century Forms” at MLA 2023

Richard Grossman, Torah Ball, 2011. Corundum sphere 5″ in diameter inscribed in Hebrew with the Ten Commandments currently buried inside Mount Princeton, Colorado, USA.

Given my ongoing interest in megatexts and other emerging hybrid and transmedia forms, I am organizing a second panel on emergent literary forms of the twenty-first-century for the 2023 Modern Language Association Convention in San Francisco, California (the first was at the 2021 MLA Convention). Please consider submitting an abstract to festb[at]hartwick[dot]edu by March 24, 2022. Here’s the CFP:

Twenty-First-Century Forms

If the novel and lyric poem might be considered residual forms, what literary forms are emerging in the twenty-first century? Panel on emergent literary forms: transmedia, digital, hybrid, remediated, megatexts, other. 250-word abstract, brief bio.

Recording of Twenty-First-Century Forms at MLA 2021

If you attended the virtual 2021 Modern Language Association Conference but were unable to come to the roundtable I organized, Twenty-First-Century Forms, you can watch a recording of it here (I believe for about six weeks). The speakers were (in order): myself, Amy Sara Carroll, Racheal Fest, Christian P. Haines, Hyemin Kim, and Eric Loy. For more information, see my previous post.

MLA 2021: Twenty-First-Century Forms

For this year’s Modern Language Association Convention, to be held virtually from January 7–10, 2021, I organized and will be speaking on a roundtable on Twenty-First-Century Forms, along with Amy Sara Carroll, Racheal Fest, Christian P. Haines, Hyemin Kim, and Eric Loy. I have included the information about the panel and, below that, full abstracts from each speaker.

181. Twenty-First-Century Forms

Thursday, January 7, 2020, 7:00 – 8:15 p.m. (EST)

If the novel and lyric poem have become residual forms, what literary forms are emerging in contemporaneity? Participants explore emergent literary forms of the twenty-first century and their relationship with, instantiation in, or remediation by other (digital) media: film, television, video, graphic narrative, video games, transmedia, or other hybrid, novel, or megatextual forms.

Speakers
Amy Sara Carroll (U of California, San Diego)
Bradley Fest (Hartwick C)
Racheal Fest (State U of New York, Oneonta)
Christian Haines (Penn State U, University Park)
Hyemin Kim (Baruch C, City U of New York)
Eric Loy (U of Rochester)

Presiding
Bradley Fest (Hartwick C)


Continue reading