Call for Proposals

Kate Chopin Panels at 2026 American Literature Association Conference in Chicago

The Kate Chopin International Society is seeking individual proposals for two sponsored panels at the 2026 American Literature Association conference in Chicago, Illinois, May 20–23, 2026

The first panel, a roundtable on “Teaching Kate Chopin,” seeks short (seven- to eight-minute) papers/remarks that address any aspect of or strategy for teaching Chopin’s life or work to today’s students—to students of any kind at any level using any materials or technology in any educational environment anywhere. Proposals should include a title, your name and affiliation, and a paragraph about your proposed remarks. Roundtable chaired by Bernard Koloski.

The second panel, “Transgressive Voices and Female Desire in Kate Chopin and her Contemporaries,” seeks comparative depictions of Chopin with other transgressive voices. To transgress implies exceeding a boundary, or a limit. Who sets these limits? Who are they set for? What kinds of acts are they meant to contain? — What is the relationship between female desire and transgression? This panel seeks proposals examining any of Chopin’s works by themselves or in comparison with other writers who have examined the relationship between desire, resistance, and transgression. Proposals for presentations no longer than twenty minutes should include a title, your name and affiliation, and a 200- to 400-word abstract. Panel chaired by Stacy Stingle.

Send submissions for both the teaching roundtable and the “Transgressive Voices and Female Desire” panel by Friday, January 23, 2026, to both Stacy Stingle at Louisiana State University, [email protected] and Bernard Koloski at KateChopin.org, [email protected]

Here’s a detailed description of the “Transgressive Voices and Female Desire” panel”:

As Kate Chopin’s The Awakening opens, we learn that “In short, Mrs. Pontellier was not a mother-woman…. They were women who idolized their children, worshiped their husbands, and esteemed it a holy privilege to efface themselves as individuals and grow wings as ministering angels.” Instead, Edna Pontellier leaves her husband, takes an apartment, begins painting, and starts an affair with a man who has no intention of loving her. We learn that “There was with her a feeling of having descended in the social scale, with a corresponding sense of having risen in the spiritual. Every step she took toward relieving herself of obligations added to her strength and expansion as an individual.”

The subject of female desire has long been transgressive for society to come to terms with. Writers and artists have always been the ones to push boundaries.

For instance, Arthur Miller’s 1953 short play, The Crucible examines the mass hysteria that broke out in Salem, Massachusetts from 1692– 1693, when several young girls were pressured to confess that that they made a pact with the Devil, while being asked to name all of the townspeople who they saw enter this bargain. At this time, perceptions of women in the New World were met with tension as social conventions came to be challenged, not the least of which was the subject of women’s sexual desire. On the surface, The Salem Witch Trials revealed the tensions and superstitions of the early colonial township, but more hidden was the fear of unchecked and uninhibited female desire. Miller wrote the play as an allegory for the witch hunt that was taking place in America at this time, known as the Red Scare after Joseph McCarthy’s hunt for Communists who he believed had infiltrated America. Upon being accused of Un-American Activities, an individual could be brought before the McCarthy show trials and persecuted by the US government. Arthur Miller, himself was questioned by the House of Representatives’ Committee on Un-American Activities in 1956 and convicted of contempt of Congress for refusing to identify others present at meetings he had attended.

In D. H. Lawrence’s 1928 novel, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Lawrence remarks that “A woman has to live her life, or live in repent not having lived it.” Lawrence, like Arthur Miller, also found himself on trial. Four of Lawrence’s books were banned for writing about women’s sexual desire, while championing sexuality, vitality and instinct. Lawrence spent much of his life on trial for his works, which were banned under obscenity laws. Lady Chatterley’s Lover focuses on the story of the upper-class Constance Reid, Lady Chatterley, who has an affair with Oliver Mellors, a lower-class gamekeeper because her husband, who has just returned from war, is now paralyzed from the waist down, and they are not physically nor emotionally compatible.  Lady Chatterley’s sexual encounters with Oliver awaken in her the realization that a woman needs more than companionship, but instead seeks a true unity of the mind and body.

When we look at Kate Chopin’s Edna, D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley, Arthur Miller’s Abigail, and others, each of these women can be noted for their independent striving to exceed their limits. In the end, this striving leads to their own annihilation. This panel is interested in comparative depictions of Chopin with other transgressive voices. To transgress implies exceeding a boundary, or a limit. Who sets these limits? Who are they set for? What kinds of acts are they meant to contain? — What is the relationship between female desire and transgression? This panel seeks proposals examining any of Chopin’s works by themselves or in comparison with other writers who have examined the relationship between desire, resistance, and transgression.

Proposals for presentations no longer than twenty minutes should include a title, your name and affiliation, and a 200- to 400-word abstract.