Refractions of the Political in 20th and 21st Century Cultural Production (Seminar)

Northeast Modern Languages Association (NeMLA) annual convention

Pittsburgh, PA

March 5 - 8, 2026

Submission Deadline: 30 September 2025, through the NeMLA portal:

https://cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/21747

How can art and culture be mobilized and/or weaponized? How much power do art and culture hold to bring about change and how is that influence met with resistance? In this seminar we wish to bring together scholars who engage with cultural production that thematizes, explicitly or covertly, their contemporary political landscapes. We hope to (re)examine and call into question methodologies surrounding the role of art within the political sphere. In particular, we are interested in (re)generating conversations that explore the space between Marx’s view that all activity is political and Adorno’s pessimism regarding the ability for anyone outside of elite institutions to produce social change in late capitalism. Our intention is to investigate the contemporary, while also engaging with historical narratives that may refract through and/or allow us to reflect on the current political moment in German-speaking Europe or globally. We encourage conversations that think beyond the canon, the hegemonic and political poles, and instead interrogate underexplored vantage points of political cultural production. We invite contributions that explore this topic across genres of legacy and new media (literature, film, television, visual arts, YouTube, social media, etc.), within national or transnational contexts, and across historical periods, including today.

Topics may include but are not limited to:

• the potential of art/culture as a pathway to political change
• political cultural production created from positions of marginality
• political creative work in the high- and low-brow
• the “gray space” between activism and propaganda
• understanding the audience’s relationship to political art
• the weaponization within centers of power of art’s ability to effect change
• understanding (coerced) propagandistic authorship under oppressive regimes
• exploring moments of hedged political stances by minoritized artists
• the role of art in forging networks of solidarity
• aesthetic strategies employed to provoke, resist, and/or manipulate
• the role of translation in mobilization across borders

Abstracts and Brief Bios:

The co-chairs of this panel, Lucas Riddle (lucasriddle@pitt.edu) and Maryann Piel (pielmm@cofc.edu), invite 300-word abstracts and brief bios to be submitted by September 30, 2025 through the NeMLA portal: https://cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/21747