Procedures for Author Societies

Procedures for Author Societies:  The representatives of the various author societies that make up the American Literature Association will organize most of the program.  Societies are expected to offer their own calls for papers using their websites, email list-serves, newsletters, other publications, or mailing lists.  Each society is also expected to post a call for papers or announce its plans on this ALA website by sending the CFP to Alfred Bendixen at ab23@princeton.edu and cc’ing the conference director at carr@georgiasouthern.edu as soon as possible and no later than December 1, 2024.  Societies are expected to advertise the national conference in their publications or on their websites.  This expectation can be met by including the following notice in appropriate publications and websites:

The American Literature Association’s 36th annual conference will meet at the Westin Copley Place May 21-24, 2025 (Wednesday through Saturday of Memorial Day weekend).  The deadline for proposals is January 30, 2025. For further information or specific questions, please consult the ALA website at www.americanliteratureassociation.org or contact the conference director, Professor Olivia Carr Edenfield, at carr@georgiasouthern.edu.

The official representatives of each author society should confirm tentative plans for sessions with the conference director by email at carr@georgiasouthern.edu  before Nov 1, 2024. This is essential if any society is requesting more than two sessions and a business meeting. Please send an email noting your plans, the number of desired sessions, and any special requests. If your society, for whatever reason, chooses not to sponsor a session this year, please let the conference director know that.

By January 30, 2025, the conference director should receive an email with the complete program information. That information should follow the following format for each panel:

  1.  The subject line of the email should read ALA 2025: Name of Society. This enables the conference director to file emails efficiently. Then provide the rest of information as both an attachment (preferably in WORD) and pasted in.  The ALA will use Ariel Narrow (12 point font); please do so if you can.  If you cannot, do not worry about it.
  2. Provide the program information so that it can be pasted into the final program. Please look at the following sample and then at the specific instructions that follow:

The Sublime in the Poetry of Sample
Organized by the Ima Sample Society

Chair:  Joseph Goodscholar, University of Great Hopes

  1. “Irony and Angst in the poetry of Ima Sample,” Noah Problem, College of Notre Doubt
  2. “The Beautiful Garden in The Jungle: Sample’s Influence on Sinclair,” Raphael Hythloday, University of East London
  3. “Sample’s ‘Mambo’ Poems and the Humor of Mark Twain: Beyond Beauty and Truth,” Uriah Heap, Independent Scholar

Audio-Visual Equipment required: None

Requested slot: Thursday or Friday morning

Business Meeting Requested:  the same day as the panels if possible

Please note that the sample above has no formatting (no bold, no CAPS). Please note that the presentations are listed with numbers and then five spaces and then the information.  They are NOT INDENTED as some word processing panels will do automatically unless you turn off auto-format. Book titles are italicized. If the conference organizer can cut and paste, then everything goes quickly and errors are minimized. 

  1. Provide the exact Title of the Session as you wish it listed in the Program. (Please try to be both concise and precise). Please do NOT use CAPS or special fonts or highlighting or Bold or any special formatting in any part of the material you send!
  2. On the second line, please write Organized by Name of Your Society
  3. Then list: Chair: Name, Affiliation
  4. For each paper, begin with a number, skip five spaces or hit tab, then provide the title of the presentation in quotation marks, and then the correct name of the presenter, and his or her academic affiliation. For independent scholars, you may identify a society, a place, or just note independent scholar or biographer or anything you deem appropriate. For any questions about matters of format and style, please consult The Chicago Manual of Style.
  5. You may list a respondent, if appropriate and desired.
  6. Then write Audio-Visual Equipment Required and state NONE or request the specific equipment desired. The ALA will normally provide projectors for powerpoint and dvd presentations and screens (but we will not provide laptop computers).  We will no longer provide overhead projectors, slide projectors, vcrs, or cd or cassette tape players (but you may, of course, bring your own cd or tape player). Please note that audio-visual equipment is incredibly expensive and has lately consumed $18,000 of our conference budget, which led to an increase in conference rates. Please do not request AV unless you are sure that you or your panelists need it. It costs much more to rent a piece of a/v equipment and a competent Tech person for three days than it costs to buy it; nevertheless, we are tied to services offered by the hotel and, therefore, their rates. Please make sure that all audio-visual requests reach the conference director by January 30, 2025.
  7. Because of the complexity of the program, we cannot permit individual societies to request specific time slots, but you may designate two preferred days and request either morning or afternoon.  The conference director will attempt to honor all reasonable requests provided the required program information arrives by January 30, 2025, but no promises or guarantees can be made. 
  8. Please italicize book-length works and foreign phrases and use quotation marks for shorter works.
  9. Please remind all of your participants that no-one may present more than one paper at the ALA conference and that we need to know about a/v requests immediately. Please note, however, that participants may present a paper, and chair other sessions, and appear on roundtables.
  10. Proposals that fail to follow these directions will be returned to the proposer.
  1. Please note that the ALA also welcomes Round Table Discussions.The difference between a panel and a round table is that a round table usually has a Moderator who is participating in the discussion (instead of a Chair who simply introduces speakers and monitors time) and more than 4 (four) participants.  Roundtable presentations may or may not have titles listed but round table presentations normally are 8 (eight) minutes or less in length and discussion is a more important component than formal lecture.
  2. If you wish to also schedule a business meeting for your society, please request Business Meeting and provide any desired days and times.It is important that you let the conference director know if you wish the business meeting to come before or after a panel.  Please note that while we will work to accommodate your requests, we cannot guarantee specific times. Nevertheless, we will usually try to put the business meeting directly after one of your sessions.
  3. Please note that we no longer need you to provide the email address or mailing address of your participants since ALL communication with your panel will go through you.  We count on you to inform your participant of such basic facts as the need to register and pay the conference fee. Please include a phone number where you can be reached in the event that the conference director is unable to email you.

          The conference director will normally confirm the receipt of all emails within 3 business days.  The      conference director may refer you to the website but will never send you an attachment to open because of the danger of computer viruses.  By mid-March, the conference director will let you know the day on which your panel or panels are scheduled.  You should inform your participants of the day and instruct them to register using the information on the website at www.americanliteratureassociation.org  It is especially important to remind each of your participants that anyone who fails to register by April 22nd will be dropped from the program.

  1. If any conference proposal comes in after the deadline, the conference director may be unable to place it on the program and will not be able to consider requests for specific times.

 

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