Romanticism and Related Panels at MLA ‘26
If you’re headed to Toronto January 8 to 11 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 Reception on January 10.
This list is compiled by the K-SAA Communications Fellows and Communications Director.
The K-SAA sponsored panel is:
274 - Mary Shelley at Last
Friday January 9, 1:45-3:00PM
MTCC - 716A
Description
In tribute to the bicentenary of The Last Man's publication in 1826, this panel will gather presenters interested in examining (1) any neglected or underrepresented themes/ideas in Shelley's post-apocalyptic novel; (2) Mary Shelley's legacy across the centuries; and/or (3) ideas of lasting and endurance in any of Mary Shelley's works.
Presider
Omar F. Miranda (U of San Francisco)
Presentations
“The Politics of Breathing in The Last Man”
Hannah Markley (Stetson U)
“Speaking Plague: Fatal and Infectious Language in The Last Man and the Digital Age”
Gwendolyn Moore (U of Delaware, Newark)
“Keeping to Mary Shelley”
Yasmin Solomonescu (U of Notre Dame)
“Sibylline Leaves and Number Theory in Mary Shelley’s The Last Man”
Sarah Weston (Washington U in St. Louis)
Romanticism panels
Thursday January 8
108 - Littoral Romanticisms
5:15-6:30PM
MTCC - 605
Presider
Michele Speitz (Furman U)
Presentations
“Coastal Infrastructures in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic”
Jeremy Chow (Bucknell U)
“Seam and Separation: The Many-Mouthed Ganges and Romantic Hydrology”
Padma Rangarajan (U of California, Riverside)
“Lady Caroline Lamb, Lima, and the Coastal Disaster of Ada Reis"
Lindsey Eckert (Florida State U)
“Island Lords: Walter Scott, Coastal Poetics, and the Politics of Infrastructure"
Alexander Dick (U of British Columbia)
139 - New Approaches to Byron: Looking Back at the Bicentennial
7:00-8:15PM
MTCC - 713A
Presentations
“Byron, Cursing, and Being Cursed”
Tom Mole (Durham U)
“Byron’s Recension: Redaction, Textology, History”
Michael Macovski (Georgetown U)
“Factual, Fictional, and Poetic Characters in Galt’s Life of Lord Byron”
Angela Esterhammer (U of Toronto)
“Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage: Literary Landscapes and the Fields of Conflict in Napoleonic Europe”
Susan Oliver (U of Essex)
Friday January 9
167-Migration in British Romanticism
8:30-9:45AM
MTCC - 604
Presider
Jonathan Sachs (Concordia U)
Presentations
“Highlanders, Migration, and the Law: Walter Scott’s Guy Mannering”
Alexander Dick (U of British Columbia, Vancouver)
“Lady Caroline Lamb’s Graham Hamilton and the Migratory Possibilities of South America”
Lindsey Eckert (Florida State U)
“Moving Plants: Scenographic Representations of Exotic Flora and Botanical Imperialism on the Romantic Stage”
Yasser Shams Khan (Qatar U)
“Arctic Migrations: Indigenous Encounters and Cultural Displacement in British Romantic Exploration Narratives”
Hayley Bowen (Temple U, Philadelphia)
311 - The Supplement of Romanticism: In Honor of Tilottama Rajan’s Contribution to Romanticism Studies
3:30-4:45PM
MTCC - 714B
Description
This session brings together an international range of scholars in English literature, comparative literature, and theory to examine Tilottama Rajan’s groundbreaking scholarship in Romanticism studies since the 1980s. Panelists mark and build on the global and interdisciplinary scope of Rajan’s influence in shaping the field at the intersection of contemporary theory and Romantic-era literature, philosophy, and science.
Speakers
Chris Bundock (U of Essex)
Julie A. Carlson (U of California, Santa Barbara)
Joel Robert Faflak (Western U)
Elizabeth Fay (U of Massachusetts, Boston)
Theresa Michele Kelley (U of Wisconsin, Madison)
Andrew Sargent (Huron University C)
Saturday January 10
381 - Recompense in English Romanticism, Recompense and English Romanticism
8:30-9:45AM
MTCC - 802B
Presider
Yoon Sun Lee (Wellesley C)
Presentations
“The Gleaners and Keats”
Carmen Faye Mathes (McGill U)
“Enough Kant”
David Clark (McMaster U)
“Recompense, Abundance, Stewardship”
Samuel Baker (U of Texas, Austin)
384 - Poetry Criticism in Practice: Rereading “The Raven”
8:30-9:45AM
MTCC - 206D
Presider
Emily Sun (Barnard C)
Presentations
“Poe and Hosokawa”
Jonathan Elmer (Indiana U, Bloomington)
“Mallarmé Sounds Poe”
Catherine A. Witt (Reed C)
“The Raven in the Tropics: Imperial Decadence and Pie Forzado”
Luis Othoniel Rosa (U of Nebraska, Lincoln)
451 - The Romantic Interleaf
12:00-1:15PM
MTCC - 802B
Description
Presenters discuss case studies and theories of Romantic practices of interleaving between 1750 and 1830, in search of family resemblances that could establish the Romantic interleaf as a new object of study.
Presider
Ruth Abbott (U of Cambridge)
Speakers
Deidre Lynch (Harvard U)
Michael Macovski (Georgetown U)
Dahlia J. Porter (U of Glasgow)
Emily Senior (U of Cambridge)
Lucy Sixsmith (U of Cambridge)
Andrew M. Stauffer (U of Virginia)
Imagining Deleuze’s Romanticism
1:45-3:00PM
MTCC - 602B
Presider
Adam Mohamed (Western U)
Presentations
“Blake’s Experimental Events: Reading Deleuze’s Event and Time-Image in The Book of Urizen”
Adam Mohamed (Western U)
“Phrenological Desire and the Head of William Blake”
David Monroe Baulch (U of West Florida)
“Shelley’s Odes and the Deterritorialization of the Soul”
Elizabeth Fay (U of Massachusetts, Boston)
517 - Late Romantic Survivals
3:30-4:45PM
MTCC - 606
Presider
Tilottama Rajan (Western U)
Presentations
“‘A World Forgotten of the Sun’: Decadent Ghost-Poems as a Romantic Afterword/Afterworld”
John Rooney (Ohio State U, Columbus)
“‘All Night in a Waste Land’: Tennyson’s Idylls of the King and the Romantic Waste of the 1830s”
Andrew Sargent (Western U)
“The Lifted Veil and Romantic Prometheanism”
Matthew Sussman (U of Sydney)