The MLA Forum Executive Committee for 16th-Century French invites proposals for the following panels, to take place at MLA 2017 in Philadelphia.
New Work in Sixteenth-Century French Literature and Culture
The committee solicits proposals for 20-minute papers presenting new work in 16th-century French literature and culture.  Proposals that feature ongoing work in preparation for publication (monograph or essay) are particularly welcome.  Please send 200-word abstracts to Leah Chang (lchang@gwu.edu) by3/15/2016.
The Vibrant Renaissance: Matter, Objects, and the Nonhuman in Early Modern France
Recent work on new materialisms and political ecologies of matter and things is reframing how we think about matter, about its dull-ness or vibrancy (Bennett), about the agency of assemblages (Deleuze and Guattari, Latour), and about nonhuman objects (Harman, Bryant).
Proposals sought for 7-minute position papers for a roundtable at the MLA about the connections between such fields/theories and Early Modern France. The committee would be particularly interested in proposals that theorize what the Early Modern period, i.e. a period before geology, before certain disciplinary splits, can bring to contemporary theory. Please send 200-word abstracts to Phillip John Usher (pu8@nyu.edu) by 3/15/2016.