Deadline: March 1, 2024
Contact: Liina-Ly Roos, Assistant Professor, Department of German, Nordic, and Slavic, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Email: lroos3@wisc.edu

2024 marks ten years since the creation of Future Library (2014-2114, Katie Paterson), a multisite artwork that comprises a forest in Norway, an anthology of literature by world renowned authors to be kept secret until its publication in 2114, and a reading room inside Deichman public library where the manuscripts are housed. In conjunction with the 2025 MLA convention’s presidential theme, “Visibility,” this panel, organized by the CLCS Nordic Forum, asks how and whether Future Library serves as an (in)visible planetary archive. We invite papers exploring the project’s practices of visibility and invisibility, such as sealing the texts from view, granting digital access to its annual manuscript hand-off ceremony, and drawing attention to nature’s materiality and poesis. While attention to the Nordic authors, origins, or context of the project is welcome, we also invite papers on how the work of participating authors from beyond the Nordic region—including Margaret Atwood, Elif Shafak, Han Kang, and Ocean Vuong—resonates with the methods and aims of the project. Please submit your 250-word abstracts by 1 March to Liina-Ly Roos (CLCS Nordic Forum Chair) by sending them to lroos3@wisc.edu. (The 2025 MLA Convention will be held in New Orleans, 9–12 January 2025.)

Posted on February 1, 2024