Women in French Sessions
2025 Midwest Modern Language Association Conference
Marquette University / Milwaukee, WI
November 14-16, 2025
https://www.midwest-mla.org/
“Writing Hope, Living Resilience: Feminist, Queer, and Trans Voices in French-Language Contexts”
Women in French invites papers for a session at the 2025 Midwest Modern Language Association Conference themed “The Humanities is Where Hope Lives.”
We seek submissions exploring how women, nonbinary, transgender, and queer writers, artists, and thinkers within French-language contexts across time periods cultivate hope and resilience through their work.
We invite submissions from all Women in French members, regardless of their geographic location. International and independent scholars are also strongly encouraged to contribute. Women in French offers a complimentary one-year membership to new members. Additionally, competitive travel funds are available for graduate students.
Papers might consider:
- The poetics of hope in contemporary feminist, queer, and trans writing
- Historical perspectives on women's and gender-diverse resilience in Francophone literature
- Intersectional reimaginings of social and political futures
- Collective storytelling as resistance
- Intergenerational narratives of survival and renewal
- Queer and trans eco-feminist visions of sustainability and hope
Please submit a 250-word abstract and brief bio by April 25, 2025, to Adrienne Angelo ama0002@auburn.edu.
“Hope, Resilience, and Feminist Political Agency in French-Language Online Participative Culture”
While increasing critical attention has been placed on social media and (micro)blogging as a means of political discourse, this discussion has often focused on the products of online participative culture, rather than on the root causes that led individual actors to adopt glocalized forms of political action. This is especially the case with women’s online activism, which has historically operated outside of institutionalized avenues of social discourse and has consequently offered a privileged means of self-expression and collective association that transgresses – or at the very least, calls into question – gendered norms and societal expectations. In accordance with the MMLA’s 2025 presidential theme, Women in French invites papers that examine how productive dimensions of hope and social resilience have led women to leverage the participative culture of the Internet as a means of engaging with public opinion and advocating for social change.
We invite submissions from all Women in French members, regardless of their geographic location, and offer a complimentary one-year membership to new members.
Possible topics include, but are certainty not limited to:
- Women’s motivations for glocal political activism in Francophone Europe (e.g., antiracist marches, women’s marches, etc.) or the MENA region (e.g., the Arab Spring, the Hirak, the Thawra, etc.)
- The differential motivations for employing – and the different utility of – social media and online activism in “Western”, “Third World”, and “Decolonial” feminism
- Digitally mediated forms of Sisterhood and the rise of intersectional forms of solidarity (e.g., feminism and antiracism, decolonial activism and antifascism, etc.)
Please submit a 250-word abstract and brief bio by April 25, 2025, to Eric Wistrom, wistrom@uwalumni.com.
