Northeast MLA (NeMLA.org) is pleased to announce the 2027 annual convention hosted on the campus of Salve Regina University in Newport, Rhode Island. The dates are Saturday March 6 through Tuesday March 9, which coincides with their spring break.

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Submissions for NeMLA occur in two stages

Stage 1: Session Proposals (due May 30)

Session proposal deadline is May 30, 2026 for priority review. Late submissions will be considered until scheduling blocks become full or until June 30, whichever comes first (with rolling notification). Please review the session types (Panel, Seminar, Roundtable, Creative, Workshop). NeMLA sessions may be in three modalities: in-person only, virtual-only, or hybrid. Log into the portal to submit a session proposal.

Stage 2: Session Chairs post calls for papers (June 15 – Sept. 30)

Once your session proposal is vetted and approved, you may issue a call for individual paper abstracts. Guidance on how to serve as a session chair and how to issue the call for papers will be provided in late May. Individual paper submissions will open June 15 and close September 30.

 

Membership in NeMLA

Members may propose sessions for the 2027 convention. Join or renew your membership to receive access to Modern Language Studies, be eligible for grants and awards, participate in the CV Clinic, and propose sessions for the convention. Membership is for a single calendar year. The dues for 2026 are $79 for full-time faculty and $49 for everyone else. Membership dues support the operating costs of the association. (You are already a member if you presented or chaired a session at the 2026 convention in Pittsburgh or if you purchased a stand-alone 2026 calendar year membership.)

 

2027’s conference theme is “Empowering Communities” 

This theme evokes the process of transformation from a state of passivity to being active agents of change. It represents a shift away from authoritarianism and toward a model that values (and solves problems through) local knowledge, collaboration, and collective action.

Under the theme of empowering communities, we welcome scholarship that examines how cultural knowledge can serve as a source and means of empowerment, the role of culture in constructing agency, and how communities are creating spaces conducive to such empowerment. As always, we also welcome proposals that extend, challenge, or bypass the annual theme to make space for cutting edge scholarship and ideas.

The opening plenary will be given by Dr. Jerome Branche, whose current work addresses the interwoven themes of slavery, necropolitics, and coloniality from a transhistoric standpoint.

The keynote address will be given by Manuel Muñoz, the author of a novel and three collections of short stories, most recently The Consequences (Graywolf, 2022), and recipient of the 2023 MacArthur Foundation Fellowship and the Joyce Carol Oates Prize.