Call for Papers
Two panels at MLA 2027
Sponsored by the William MOrris Society in the United States
Los Angeles, California
January 7-10, 2027

Submission Deadline (for both panels): March 15, 2026

The William Morris Society in the United States is soliciting proposals for two panels at next year's MLA (January 7-10, 2027 in Los Angeles). You are warmly invited to submit proposals for either session. Please submit your proposals to the email addresses listed with each CFP. Submissions must be received by March 15.

Panel One:
William Morris, Labor & the Nineteenth Century

We invite papers that draw on William Morris’s socialism to examine nineteenth-century labor and craft practices, as well as the work of successors in Britain and elsewhere. Please submit 300-word abstracts and 2-page CVs.

Jennifer Rabedeau, Cornell University (rabedeau@cornell.edu) and Jesse Cordes Selbin, Gettysburg College (jcordess@gettysburg.edu).

Follow this link to the CFP posted on the MLA website.

Panel Two:
William Morris, Collections Technology & the Virtual Archive

We invite papers that consider collecting and collections with respect to William Morris and his circle. Topics include collecting practices, individual collections, collection architectures, and digitization processes. Please submit 300-word abstracts and 2-page CVs.

Jennifer Rabedeau, Cornell University (rabedeau@cornell.edu) and Amanda Gailey, University of Nebraska-Lincoln (gailey@unl.edu)

We are organizing this session in collaboration with the Society for Textual Scholarship. Follow this link to the CFP posted on the MLA website. Please note that this session is not guaranteed.

Financial support may be available from the William Morris Society in the United States for a speaker without institutional funding. If you would like to be considered for funding, please notify the session chairs when you submit your paper proposal.

Image source: William Morris's bedroom at Kelmscott House, Hammersmith